


A Lady's Guide to Shortbread, Scandal, and the Scottish Countryside

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Awkward Flirting, F/M, POV Alternating, Relationship of Convenience, Romance, Slow Burn, period romance ridiculousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11926134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: Lady Jemma Simmons, celebrated debutante and fiance of a man she can't bring herself to marry,  requires ruination.  Mr. Leopold Fitz, self-made Scottish millionaire and general social disgrace, is the perfect man for the job.It's a flawless plan: they'll be caught together, scandal will ensue, and they'll promptly go their separate ways. What she's forgotten to account for, though, is her fiance's propensity to challenging people to duels, a tenacious wire-haired terrier, his grandmother's shortbread recipe, and the possibility that they may just end up falling in love.





	1. Chapter 1

By the age of twenty-four, Leopold Fitz had come to a reasonable conclusion of the sorts of things he was capable of. Machines and railroads and men and the million moving cogs that made up the business that had made him a millionaire at twenty-one, certainly. Calling cards and ballrooms and society matrons and the thousand whirring bits of the London Season, most certainly not. He'd only come to this particular ball to meet with a prospective investor but he'd promptly been informed that leaving after he'd secured Mr. Stark's signature and handshake would have been the height of rudeness and forced to remain through at least two dances. So he was doing what he did best at these kinds of events: standing about and looking awkward. 

“Mr. Fitz?” Someone had managed to find him behind the potted palm. Fitz blinked and looked up from the sketchpad where he'd been drawing out designs to see quite possibly the loveliest woman he'd ever seen, dressed in blue and looking strangely nervous. “I was wondering if I could speak to you?” she asked.

“Certainly, Miss...”

“Simmons. Jemma Simmons,” she supplied.

“Of course. I remember reading, ah, the announcement of your engagement in the papers. Allow me to offer my...” he trailed off when she went even whiter, one hand working at the massive ring on her left hand. Had that been the right thing to say? The etiquette manual Bobbi had forced him to buy had been at least three years old—could offering congratulations on an engagement have gone out of style?

“My engagement, yes. You see, that's actually why I wanted to speak to you.” Jemma Simmons took a deep breath and went on. “Mr. Fitz, I require ruination. And I believe that you are the man to do it.”

 

Two weeks before her wedding, Jemma Simmons woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night and with the sudden conviction that marrying the man her entire life had been guiding her towards would be a terrible mistake. And whatever consequences came of it, whatever whispers people exchanged about her or scandalized glances they cast her way, whatever her parents' disappointment...she could bear it. She did not think she could bear marrying him. 

Being of a practical bent, she had rapidly decided that running away to start a new life in the Americas as a milliner would be unwise. As would feigning a fatal tropical disease. Or even simply telling her mother that she had changed her mind. The only solution would be complete ruination. Preferably from a scandalous rake. The only problem, however, was that the idea of seducing a scandalous rake and letting him have her against a balcony or in a greenhouse made something inside her shrivel up in distaste. So instead she had chosen Leo Fitz—completely socially unacceptable, but pleasant enough, from all she'd heard of him. (And at the very least, he would probably allow for the ruination to take place in a bed.) What she'd failed to account for, however, was how he might react. 

“I'm sorry, Miss Simmons,” he said now, steadily turning pink. “I must have misheard. Surely—surely you don't want _me_ to ruin you.”

“You haven't misheard at all. I can't destroy my reputation all on my own, after all.” Jemma attempted a light smile. It came out more like a grimace.

“But I'm not exactly known for that sort of thing.”

“That's why I chose you. I've done some research, you know, and I daresay that we could figure it out together.” Admittedly, some of the diagrams she had examined seemed rather daunting but she reasoned that they could try some of the simpler options and proceed from there. 

“You've done research?” He gulped, visibly. “Miss Simmons, I wish I could assist you but I'm afraid that I simply can't--”

“Please!” She shot forward and grabbed his wrist, only to drop it almost immediately, her cheeks flushed and the heat of his hand burning through her glove. “I—I can't marry him. I just can't. He looks at me as if I were a thing to be put on a shelf right alongside his hunting trophies or a—a doll that he can dress up in gowns and pearls. He doesn't even think of me as a person with thoughts and dreams and feelings of my own. Not really.”

Jemma trailed off, aware that the flush had spread from her cheeks down her neck and across her collarbone in angry red splotches. Her hands had gotten tangled up in her dress somewhere along the way and were clutching the fine fabric hard enough to tear it. She'd planned to lay out her case in a logical fashion to him until he'd have no other choice but to give in to her well-thought-out plan. Instead, she suspected that she merely looked ridiculous. An overwrought society bride with a case of wedding day jitters. Someone who didn't know her own mind when she'd always prided herself on doing just that. 

“I—I'm sorry that anyone would think of you that way. Truly,” he said. The back of his hand brushed against hers, sending a flicker of that heat through her hand again, and Jemma realized how scandalously close they were standing to each other, albeit out of sight behind a convenient potted plant. The sensible thing to do would have been to step back. Try and forget what she had proposed. Find an easier man to win over. But Jemma Simmons had never been entirely sensible, despite her best efforts otherwise. And there had been something in Leo Fitz's eyes that had lingered on the curve of her neck and the line of her shoulders that was entirely unlike a man who spent most of his time in society appearing as if he wished to be anywhere else in the world. 

“People don't think of me much, I've found,” she said ruefully. “They see a pretty dress and pearls and polite conversation and not much else.”

“I'm, ah—I'm coal,” he offered up. “Coal and railroads and great clanking machines and all sorts of things that make their lives comfortable but that they'd rather not think of. We'd make quite the pair, wouldn't we?”

“I could make introductions for you,” she blurted out. “People who might make the Season a little more bearable. We could help each other, really. Please?”

 

Fitz was going to say no. Five minutes earlier, he would have sworn his life upon it. But hope in the eyes of Miss Jemma Simmons was a truly dangerous thing.

The next day she accosted him in the park, lace and good manners and a manic gleam in her eye that Fitz found truly alarming. Before he even realized it, she had placed her hand delicately upon his forearm, seized it in a discreet death grip, and steered him away from the main path and into a secluded garden. “My fiance will be back from lunch at his club in exactly forty-five minutes, at which point I will have to be sitting demurely in the parlor embroidering some absurd pattern,” she told him in a fierce whisper. “We need a plan.”

“A plan? I, er, I thought that ruinations just sort of happened naturally. In dark gardens and such. I hear things!” he said defensively when Miss Simmons cast a disparaging glance at him. “Not necessarily accurate things, but...things.”

“We need to lay the proper groundwork. Where the ruination will happen, when, who best to discover us and fly into a rage...But at the moment, I'm simply hoping to arouse suspicion by talking with you under the flimsiest of pretenses. An introduction to your friend Miss Morse,” she explained when he opened his mouth to ask the question. “I've examined all your social acquaintances and decided upon her as the most likely desirable connection. It was all quite scientific—there was a proper five-point scale.”

“You terrify me, Miss Simmons.”

“You know, if we're going to be caught out in a scandalous affair, you really ought to call me Jemma.” She dimpled at him.

“I thought that proper young ladies only went by their first name with bosom friends, immediate family members, and their husbands after seven years of marriage and at least two children. I read etiquette manuals,” he said when she started giggling. “Miss Morse made me a present of one. I suspect that it may have been a joke but then I do think that pink waistcoats may be coming back into fashion any day now.”

“I'm sure you'll look quite dashing in it. It must have been so strange,” she added after they had rounded the corner into the rose garden. “To come into all of this without having been born to it.”

“I grew up in a mill town,” he said. “Smoky air and the machines going day and night and people coughing up their lungs. The first time I saw a country estate—not even one of the grand ones, just some baronet's manor house—I thought I was dreaming.”

She didn't offer up platitudes about rags to riches, or shudder with horror at the thought of what his childhood must have been like. Miss Jemma Simmons simply listened to him, head tipped to one side, hand wrapped around her fine lace parasol, taking everything he said in and weighing it in her head. She asked him questions about his inventions as if she truly hoped to know the answers and he let himself suspect that she did. She was clever, he realized with a sudden shock as she asked him about the exact mechanism that had made his engine ten times more efficient than that of his closest competitor. Far more clever than anyone had perhaps given her credit for.

“It must be marvelous to make things,” she said with a sigh. “And to have people actually want to see them. Last year, I wanted to exhibit some of the roses I'd bred, you know. My father forbade it.”

“You breed roses?”

“And other flowers. Right now I'm working on one that's almost pure white, with just the palest pink at its edges, like sunlight on the snow. I've got a blue rose too—well, it's not properly blue yet but it's going to be. Deep blue like a sapphire. I've even managed to have some orchids in the greenhouse, lady's slipper and boat orchids and vanilla orchids—I'm sorry,” she stopped abruptly. “I'm going on and on.”

“I don't mind. They sound lovely.” They did. And she'd looked even lovelier when she was talking about them, eyes bright and voice rising with excitement and smiling at the world like she was about to eat it all up. Leo Fitz had met beautiful women before—a girl with curling red hair and an easy laugh back home, the rosy-cheeked daughter of a local squire who'd been one of his early investors, the pale, slender debutantes who populated the drawing rooms of high society—but he'd never met a woman who seemed to burn with it the way Jemma Simmons did. 

“I suppose that I ought to be going soon. Embroidery awaits.” She scowled at the thought. “I'll arrange for an invitation to be sent to you and Miss Morse for tea on Wednesday. Tea and plotting?”

“I promise to only put raspberry jam on my scones. I've read that gooseberry is quite out of fashion,” he said awkwardly. “I'll be the model of propriety.”

“Oh no, Mr. Fitz.” She smiled suddenly, brief and dazzling. “Very soon I'll need you to be quite improper.”


	2. Chapter 2

Exactly five minutes after Fitz returned home from the park, Bobbi Morse marched in through his door. (His butler, a remarkably proper man of the old school who Fitz paid exorbitant sums of money to keep his household from collapsing into chaos, had long since given up on convincing Bobbi to follow proper calling etiquette. When you were descended from one of the families in the Domesday Book and heiress to a vast fortune, calling cards ceased to be necessary.)

“Fitz, I'm tremendously proud of you,” Bobbi announced. “Would you like to know why?”

“I'm sure you'll tell me why.”

“You caused your first scandal,” Bobbi said delightedly. “I just came from Mrs. Stark's visiting hours and everyone was talking about you walking with Jemma Simmons in the park. If she really does have you over to tea, their heads might implode.”

“How did everyone know about it?”

“Elaborate spy network. I've heard that even the pigeons in Hyde Park have been recruited into it.” Bobbi sank down gracefully onto his sofa and fixed him with her best penetrating stare “Are you going to tell me how you made her acquaintance and what you plan to do with it?”

“She was kind enough to talk to me. That's all.” Fitz stared diligently at the pattern of his sofa and hoped that his butler would come round with the tea tray soon. Cake was practically guaranteed to keep Bobbi occupied for a good three minutes—five if it arrived with scones—and then he could settle on what to tell her. Or how much to tell her. Or how long he could hold out before confessing to everything. 

“I don't know how you manage to be so good at poker when you have so many tells,” Bobbi said. “You scrub at the back of your neck, you won't meet my gaze, and you turn the exact same shade of red as the lobster at Lady Hill's last dinner.”

“I count cards. I've got quite a clever method really, it--”

“And now you're trying to deflect. Rather clumsily, in fact. So tell me, Fitz, what exactly does Jemma Simmons want with you?”

“She wants me to ruin her,” Fitz admitted. 

Bobbi's jaw dropped. So did her tea cup. 

A few minutes later, after cake and scones had arrived and the butler had whisked off the shards of part of Fitz's second-best tea set and Bobbi had managed to stop staring at him like he had suddenly sprouted a second head, she set her new tea cup down with a decisive clink. 

“Let me make sure that I've heard you correctly. You, Leopold Fitz, are going to permanently besmirch the virtue of one of the loveliest debutantes of the season a few days before she weds the most eligible gentleman of the season?” Bobbi paused for dramatic effect. 

“Yes,” Fitz mumbled. “But it sounds worse when you say it like that.”

“But why? When? How? Well, I suppose that you know how,” Bobbi added, half to herself. “Unless you've never— _do_ you know how?”

“Of course I know how.” Fitz had never noticed just how intricate the pattern of his carpet was. Flowers and fauns and a fountain and Greek gods cavorting about somewhere. Truly an impressive endeavor. “It's a favor, really. She, er, she doesn't want to get married. Man sounds quite terrible, from what I've heard.”

“He is. I've been seated next to him at several dinner parties. But most of London would disagree with me, I'm afraid. Have you thought about what you're going to do?” Bobbi asked. “Afterward? Are you going to take up a life of rakishness and gambling? Hide behind potted palms at parties to avoid being challenged to duels by Mr. Ward's circle of friends or being scolded by society matrons?”

“I was hoping that you'd duel the society matrons for me, actually.” Or he'd go up to Scotland for a few months until things had settled down. Leave things in London in the very capable hands of Mr. Coulson, take long walks across the moors, design some new improvements to his factories, finally read _Bleak House_ , not wonder at all about how Jemma Simmons' roses were coming along. He'd formulated a plan for the aftermath, he really had. Well...half a plan, if he was honest with himself. His brain tended to stall out a bit when he thought about the ruination himself. 

“She asked me for my help,” Fitz finally said. “And I promised that I would help her.”

“I think that you like her,” Bobbi said thoughtfully, stirring sugar into her tea. “Far too much for your own good.”

“I don't like her,” Fitz protested. “I mean, I don't dislike her. Obviously. I think she's brilliant and of course she's lovely but I—we have an arrangement of convenience. It's quite calculating on both our parts.”

“Calculating. Exactly.” Bobbi simply arched an eyebrow at him. “You have no idea how much trouble you're getting yourself into, do you?”

“She wants us both to come to tea on Wednesday. To plot,” Fitz said sheepishly in the tone of voice that he'd reserved only for asking Bobbi to do him immense favors. He'd grown up without any siblings but from the very first moment Bobbi had swept over at one of his best parties to tell him which debutantes were likely to step on his toes and where the best refreshments were to be found, he'd somehow acquired an older sister.

“Well then. I'll have to be the devious one for both of you. But I'm only dueling three society matrons. Four at most.”

 

“Remember, you must sound distressed when you say it. Not mildly inconvenienced. Practice it again,” Jemma said firmly.

“Oh no! I fear that Jemma has been led into the path of temptation and is alone with a man at this very moment. Not just any man, but a Scot! I thought I'd gasp dramatically there and give your mother some time to call for her smelling salts.” Miss Daisy Johnson, Jemma's childhood friend, closest companion, and co-conspirator, was currently sprawled across Jemma's settee and not taking their plot nearly as seriously as she should. 

“Right now, she must be in his den of iniquity and industry!” Daisy gasped, putting a hand over her heart. “I shudder to imagine what sorts of unholy acts she could be conducting at this very moment. What do you think of a sob after that? A ladylike one, of course.”

“I think it all sounds very Gothic. But there certainly won't be any unholy acts of any kind,” she added quickly. “It'll be quite tame, as far as ruinations go.”

“Well, that's a disappointment. I only meant that if you're going to all this trouble, you ought to get something out of it,” Daisy said when Jemma shot her a shocked glance. 

“I'm getting plenty out of it. My freedom, for one.” Jemma folded her hands in her lap and tried her best to look dignified. She'd been bold with Mr. Fitz in the park before but she doubted she could be nearly so bold with him behind closed doors. In fact, she suspected that the whole thing would be a bit of a muddle on her part. The diagrams she'd examined, although overflowing with suggestions of various methods for the act itself, offered very little in the way of how to get there in the first place. Would he take the lead or would he expect her to capably take him in hand, so to speak? Were they supposed to do anything before hand or just get straight down to business? Her family's library, usually so reliable, had utterly failed her on this point. 

“What do you plan on doing once you've got it?” Daisy asked. 

“Retiring to the countryside and growing roses until the scandal dies down,” Jemma said happily. “Reading quite a lot. I may even finally learn to embroider something larger than a handkerchief.”

Daisy gave a distinctly unladylike snort. 

“What if they try to make you marry him?” she said after a moment. “Your mother may not be able to bear the shame if she doesn't have you married off by the end of the season. She's said so nearly every time I've seen her—I think it may be a misguided attempt to nudge my mother into arranging a marriage for me. Last time, she even slipped my mother a list of popular bachelors.”

“What happened to the list?”

“Straight into the fire after she left,” Daisy said with a touch of satisfaction. “No one's ever been able to make my mother do something she doesn't want to do.”

What a lovely way to be, Jemma thought and stifled down a flash of envy. Daisy had been adopted by her mother, the slightly notorious Melinda May, when she was a baby and it had been the two of them for as long as society could remember, living in a lavishly appointed house in a part of town that they had made fashionable simply by being there and quietly disregarding what everyone else said or thought of them. Jemma's family pored over the society papers every morning, her mother tallying up how many times the family had been mentioned and assessing if the coverage had been positive, negative, or mixed. She was the third-eldest of six, with an elder sister who had discussed her marriage prospects as eagerly as if she were watching a play rather than her own sister's life, three younger sisters peering anxiously over her shoulder waiting for their own debut and an elder brother set to inherit everything despite his current lack of interest in much besides drinking and gaming.

“You could come stay with us in the country for a while,” Daisy offered and reached over to squeeze Jemma's hand in hers. “We'll hide you in the priest hole if your mother comes around trying to match you off to Mr. Fitz.”

“My mother would never countenance me marrying him,” Jemma said and ignored the whisper of doubt that had been persistently nagging her since she had first approached Mr. Fitz at the ball. “New money with no social connections to speak of and not even English. That's partly why I chose him, of course. I needed a man who my family would never wish to be connected with.”

“You are shockingly calculating,” Daisy said fondly. “Poor Mr. Fitz.”

 

The plan, as they'd worked it out between them with Bobbi's help over an elaborate afternoon tea, was relatively simple. On Friday evening around nine, Jemma would feign illness at the dinner she was scheduled to attend and bribe her family's coachman to take her to Fitz's townhouse instead of home. Unfortunately, the coachman was fond enough of her that he wasn't likely to tell her mother. That was where Daisy came in. At half past ten, she would burst in to the dinner, tell Jemma's mother that her daughter was on the verge of being compromised, and then lead her on a round about chase through town only to arrive at Fitz's too late to prevent the total destruction of her daughter's reputation. Simple yet elegant—so simple, in fact, that there was absolutely nothing daunting about it. She'd braved London ballrooms and countryside lawn games and garden teas time after time. Leopold Fitz was nothing compared to that. 

 

Jemma Simmons arrived on his doorstep at a quarter past nine exactly, her elaborate curls already escaping her tiara and a beaded reticule dangling from one wrist. Her gown was pale pink and consisted of layer after layer of chiffon that caught the pale yellow glow of the streetlamps and outlined her in light. Fitz had to pause and catch his breath when he first opened the door and saw her. He'd thought she was lovely when he first met her, of course and yet...it managed to surprise him every time he saw her again. 

“Isn't the hour a bit early for ruination?” he finally managed. “I wasn't expecting you until quarter to ten.”

“I left the party early,” she said. “I simply couldn't sit there any longer eating trifle and answering questions about the new curtains I plan to install in Mr. Ward's town house. Or how soon I think we might produce a heir to the title. Or how much I simply adore his bloodhounds.”

“They do seem to slobber quite a lot,” Fitz offered and immediately regretted it as Jemma gave him a sharp look. Perhaps the bloodhounds had been meant as a metaphor? But Mr. Ward really did have a pack of bloodhounds, great slobbery creatures that--

“Do you have a dog? I mean, I've never seen you with one but my scope of experience with you is quite limited so for all I know, you could have a stable of them. Not that I know very much about you in the first place, which considering what I've...I'm sorry,” she trailed off. “I'm rambling on and on.”

“I have a dog, actually. A terrier named Angus. He's very clever, especially when it comes to hiding his bones. I found one in my cravat drawer the other day. And one in the wine cellar. And one by my fountain pens. I'm fairly certain that it's driving my butler mad and—and now I'm rambling too,” Fitz said. “So we're even.”

“I think we are.” She smiled faintly at him and Fitz felt a surge of relief. “I suspect that I'm nervous, you know. I thought I wouldn't be and yet...”

“I can get you a cup of tea,” Fitz said firmly. “And some biscuits. Tea and biscuits fix most things, I've found.”

“That sounds lovely.” She turned slowly in place, tilting her head back to take in the soaring ceiling of his foyer and traced one hand along the gilt frame of a seascape. “I don't think I've ever seen so many paintings in one place. For a vulgar millionaire, you have quite the art collection,” Jemma added wryly. 

“I liked to draw when I was younger.” Fitz had bought most of the things in the townhouse—the carved chairs and velvet sofas and sets of fine china—under duress, Bobbi's strict guidance, or both. The paintings he had picked out on his own. Nothing fashionable, no stuffy portraits of him standing in front of a fireplace with loyal hounds at his feet. His friend Lance Hunter, who had virtually no money, a talent for getting into trouble, and connections in every part of Paris despite his tendency to get staggering drunk and sing “God Save the Queen”, had found a new school of painters whose work was quite unlike anything Fitz had ever seen, all curving brushstrokes and flashes of light. Close up, the canvases looked like nothing at all—dabs of paint and slapdash streaks of color—but if he stepped back, suddenly everything came together. He'd been enraptured from the first time Hunter had dragged him into a gallery in Paris, unable to stop looking at each painting over and over again. 

“The poppies are my favorite at the moment,” he added. “In the drawing room. I'll show you. And then maybe we'll see if we can get cocoa with our biscuits as well.” 

 

Leo Fitz was an absolute failure as far as rakes went. So far, Jemma's evening of scandal had consisted of an extensive tour of his art collection which had actually proven to be an extensive tour of his art collection, some excellent biscuits and positively decadent cocoa in his drawing room, and an introduction to a wire-haired terrier who had currently planted himself in her lap and seemed to have no intention of moving. 

“He likes me,” she said smugly.

“Angus likes everyone. Except for my butler and even then he'd probably change his mind if Randolph would condescend to give him a scratch behind the ears now and then. But I think he particularly likes you,” Fitz added quickly when he saw Jemma start to pout. “Especially if you keep on sneaking him treats.”

“I always wanted to have a dog when I was younger. We have hounds out in the country and my mother's had a succession of silly spaniels, but I wanted one that would be my very own. Although I would have taken anything of my own, really. I shared everything with my sister for years and then passed it down to my younger sisters after me. I did get my brother's Greek textbook once. Mostly because he lacked any interest in Greek.” Her brother had never been particularly fond of school, even when he'd been at Oxford, and he'd brought his books home with their spines uncracked and their pages pristine, dust gathering on their covers where he'd let them sit on a shelf for the entire term. Jemma had snatched them up when her mother wasn't watching and devoured them early in the mornings, sitting in her bed with a cup of tea begged off the maid before the rest of the house had even stirred. 

“So you speak Greek?'

“Only as much as I could teach myself.” Jemma shrugged, letting Angus scramble from her lap to nose at bits of crumbs on the floor and tucking her feet up underneath her skirts. “I attempted a bit of the _Odyssey_ and it didn't go quite as I hoped. I kept on getting men and cattle mixed up—it made for some confusing reading.”

“That's brilliant.”

“I mean, not really. It would have been brilliant if I'd gotten all the way through.” She glanced down at her skirts, knotting her hands together tightly, and fought to stave off a blush. It hadn't been much, in the end. Nothing like what the scholars at Oxford and Cambridge did. Nothing that anyone else would have considered useful. 

“That's still brilliant. And unlike anything I've ever known anyone else to do. And you're--”

The clock chimed half past ten and Fitz stopped in the middle of his sentence. Oh. Oh no. It was late. Far later than the time-line she'd drawn up for the evening demanded. How had it gotten this late? Daisy would be knocking on her mother's door any minute now and launching into her dramatic recitation of Jemma's seduction and Jemma would still be completely unseduced. 

“Where's your bedroom?” she demanded.

“My bedroom? It's upstairs but--”

“We're horribly off schedule,” she informed him and leaped to her feet. “It'll have to be a quick ruination but it'll be all right. If you start unlacing me now, we can leave a trail of clothes heading up the stairs.”

“A trail of clothes?” Fitz looked at her dazedly.

“It's traditional. Now give me your vest. The vest,” Jemma repeated impatiently and held out her hand for it. She'd leave her wrap and gloves at the bottom of the stairs but he had many more pieces of clothing to leave strewn about as damning evidence. “And we'll need your shirt and cravat after that as well.”

“Aren't trails of clothing a little bit obvious? That's the sort of thing that mustachioed villains do in two-bit Gothic novels,” Fitz grumbled. He handed it over to her anyway and let her grab his hand to tow him towards the stairs. 

“This is meant to signify that we're in the throes of passion and entirely too wrapped up in each other to worry about things like hanging up my dress,” Jemma said and dropped her glove at the foot of the stairs. Perhaps it should look a little more disheveled? There was only so much she could do with a glove. Fitz's vest, though, she could wrinkle properly, in spite of the horrified looks he gave her as she started crumpling it between her hands.

“I feel very throed,” Fitz said dryly. “As does my vest.”

Jemma just rolled her eyes at him. “It's being sacrificed for a good cause.”

Fitz looked mournfully back at it as she threw it over the balustrade. Jemma barely managed to hold back a giggle. “Right,” she said. “Now the cravat and then we can start working on your shirt.”

“I have to say, I don't feel at all like a worldly rake at the moment. I suspect that you may be the one ruining me.”

“I simply have a good sense of initiative.” She tugged on one end of the cravat until it came undone and sliding into her hand, her fingers just barely skimming over the suddenly bare skin at Fitz's neck. He was warm, she thought dazedly, heat radiating off of him like a fireplace and she could feel his pulse beating rapidly through his skin, nearly as fast as her own hammering heart. He smelled faintly of paper and ink and the blend of tea he must have been drinking earlier. Something with a hint of cinnamon and spices and entirely different from the carefully blended scents most men applied. She almost leaned in to catch a better whiff of it before she remembered herself and sharply drew her hand back, clutching the cravat tightly in her first. Fitz seemed dazed too and stared wide-eyed at her before he took a step down the hallway. One hand dropped back down to his side from where he'd half-raised it and he shook his head from side to side as if waking up from a dream. It was just her hand on his skin for half a moment, Jemma told herself. Hardly something to make her blush. The blushing could come later. 

“Your hands are freezing,” he told her, smile tugging one corner of his mouth up. “Like you've just plunged them in ice water. But I suppose I can make the terrible sacrifice and bear it. I'll even give up my second-favorite shirt to the cause too.”

“Right then.” She dropped the cravat on the Persian carpet with a flourish. “Are we nearly to your room?”

“Second door on the right.” Fitz pushed it open and gestured her inside. 

Jemma Simmons had admittedly never seen a gentlemen's bedroom in her life. But she thought that this was quite unlike the bedroom of any other gentlemen in London. It had the usual things—a massive oak bed, a wardrobe, a wash-stand, and a small table and wing-back chair by the window. And against every wall, tucked in every corner, even piled on stacks in the floor were books. More books than she'd ever seen before in her life. 

“There's a stack for you somewhere in all this mess,” Fitz said, tugging at the back of his neck. “If I was going to ruin you, I thought that the least I could do would be to get you some novels and the latest book on roses.”

Jemma was sure she'd say something foolish if she opened her mouth. So she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him instead.


	3. Chapter 3

It was an unpracticed kiss. Amateur, even. All the manuals she had read, while helpful on more complex points, had assumed that any prospective readers already knew how to kiss. And novels tended to skimp on the finer points of technique. Jemma simply had to press her mouth to his and hope for the best. 

Fitz didn't seem to mind at all. His arms slid around her waist to pull her closer as she strained up on the tips of her toes to reach his mouth properly. He kissed her softly but thoroughly, deepening the kiss with a sigh, and Jemma's head fairly spun with it. She had thought that kissing was just a matter of mouth meeting mouth but she realized now that she had been wrong all along—Fitz kissed her with his whole body, lips and hands and tongue and the hint of teeth teasing at her bottom lip and the solid line of him pressed against her.

“What was that for?” he asked when she finally pulled away. His arms were still around her waist and he seemed rather reluctant to let her go. She was rather reluctant for him to let her go, come to think of it. It was reassuring, somehow, to be held by Fitz and when he finally let go, she couldn't help feeling disappointed. 

“Practice,” she said. “It'll have to look good when my mother arrives.”

And because he had put aside a stack of books for her. And because he had brought her biscuits and cocoa and let her spoil his dog. And because she had wanted to snatch one thing out of this night that would belong only to her. That no one else would know about, analyze and examine for evidence of how irredeemable her reputation was, shake their heads and sigh over. And simply because she had wanted to. 

“Remember that we've been carrying on a torrid affair for weeks now. We have to look like we've kissed each other hundreds of times,” Jemma added. “Do you remember all the details?”

“Of course I do. We met at a party when you stepped out for a breath of air and I was lurking about on the terrace. I thought that meeting when I asked you to dance would have sounded better, but people would've remembered it if I'd danced. It would have provided parlor entertainment for weeks,” Fitz said glumly. “Anyway, we talked for a few moments and--”

“What did we talk about?”

“Books. Orchids. Inventions. The ways that people see us and the ways we'd like them to. My dog. I couldn't help myself and fell madly in love with you,” Fitz continued. “And you honorably resisted at first but then I was able to win you over with my large fortune and dubious charm.”

“You're perfectly charming!” Jemma insisted. “Perhaps not when you're sulking about in corners or looking awkward on sofas. But when you feel comfortable with someone, you're extremely charming. You _are_.”

Fitz just blinked at her and shoved both hands deep into his pockets, completely ruining the line of his trousers. They were finely tailored and made of high-quality material and they would have been nice trousers if he had known how to wear them. If she were in charge of his wardrobe, she would teach him how to—Jemma stopped herself before she could begin theorizing about pocket squares and the cut of waistcoats. 

“And then what happened next?” she prompted him. 

“We embarked on a reckless affair in parks, the corners of ballrooms, and my study late at night. I can't remember when I was supposed to have first debauched you but your mother may be too scandalized to demand exact dates?” Fitz said hopefully. “Or explicit details?”

“My mother would faint dead away if she came within ten feet of an explicit detail. That's why Daisy's bringing smelling salts along with her. Have you planned what you're going to say if she asks you what your intentions were?” She hoped he had come up with something suitably scandalous, like spiriting her off to a Scottish love nest or jilting her the night before her wedding and watching her go weeping down the aisle. 

“That I was going to make a honest woman out of you, of course.”

Something entirely inexplicable surged inside her chest. It was warm and light and slightly terrifying. She'd gotten fond of Fitz, somewhere in between cornering him behind a potted plant and appearing on his doorstep at an improper hour. He'd become a friend, certainly—he was clever and kind and talking to him seemed as simple as breathing sometimes—but this didn't feel like a friendly feeling exactly. This was the kind of feeling that threatened to be immense. Extraordinary. Perhaps even life-changing. 

“Can you, er—can you help me with my dress?” Jemma blurted out and spun around to face the wall before she said anything or did anything or stared at him or—it was a feeling. Feelings were notoriously unreliable. Plans, however, especially ones that she had carefully concocted in a long series of sleepless nights, were. Plans meant that she could rely entirely on herself. Not on the whims of the ton, not on the schemes of her mother or the dubious generosity of her brother, and not on anyone else's heart. 

It had taken her maid nearly fifteen minutes to lace her into the dress earlier that evening, carefully crossing and knotting each ivory ribbon in an intricate pattern before tying them in a perfect bow just below her shoulders. The silk had been so slippery that the pattern had come undone more than once, the ribbons cascading down her back, and her maid had eventually ordered Jemma to stand stock still until the lacing was finished. (She'd barely been allowed to breathe.) Undoing it should be simpler, theoretically. Yet Fitz was currently looking at the back of her dress like a man instructed to single-handedly scale the Great Wall of China.

“Not enough practice unlacing ladies' dresses?” Jemma said dryly. “Generally you start at the top and go downwards.”

“Not these kinds of dresses,” Fitz mumbled, taking a step back to study the laces with his head tipped to one side. “Barely any dresses, really.”

“So there haven't been many? Women, I mean?” She'd never heard any gossip about him and a woman, not even of a mistress or a dalliance with an actress, but she supposed that he could have loved a woman before anyone knew enough to remark on it. A local girl who was able to make plaid look fetching or drive sheep against the heath and who, when Jemma attempted to picture her, looked like a stunning maiden from one of Sir Walter Scott's novels. 

“Hardly any. And none like you.”

He tugged gently at one end of the bow, pulling it loose, and slid the silk free as his fingers brushed against her shoulders. Fitz had the most careful hands she'd ever felt, slow and gentle and steady, and they sent shivers down her spine anyway. If she concentrated, she imagined that she could hear the small crackle of electricity every time his hands met her skin, accompanying the whisper of each ribbon as it came undone and the rapid thump of her pulse in her throat. He bent to press his lips to the base of her neck when the final laces dropped to the floor, so soft and quick that they were barely there, and it went through her like a lightning bolt. 

“You're lovely,” Fitz said quietly, still so close that his mouth brushed against the nape of her neck. “The most beautiful thing I've ever seen, I think. I shouldn't think it and yet—”

“You should think whatever you like. I know that you'd never—I trust you.” She did, she realized with a little shock. Here, in a man's bedroom, with her dress unlaced and his arms around her, where any other proper young lady would shriek and flee before her reputation was completely in tatters, she felt...safe. Unruffled. Ready for whatever would happen when her mother stormed through Fitz's front door. Maybe she could even see him afterward, in her country exile. Have him over for tea and take him through the gardens, exchange books from their libraries, see him smile at her when he thought she wasn't looking. Fitz had a nice smile. The first time she'd seen it, when she'd walked with him through the park and she'd asked him a question and listened to every word of his answer, it had been a revelation. A streak of light across his face.

“I'm glad of it.” Fitz helps her step out of the dress as carefully as any lady's maid and gathers the mass of chiffon and silk up into his arms before it can fall to the floor. “Should I, ah, hang it up? Or I could have it pressed if you'd like?”

“I'm afraid we'll have to leave it in a heap on the floor for appearances' sake. Your shirt too.” She stepped closer to undo the first button and saw Fitz flush again as she worked it free and set to the rest of them. The closest she'd ever come to seeing a man shirtless before had been the marble statues at the British Museum and those had been discreetly covered with convenient fig leaves. Fitz's proportions weren't exactly classical but they were still quite pleasant—lean but solid, with a surprising amount of muscle beneath.

“How did you get those?” she blurted out, her hands coming dangerously close to the muscles of his stomach as she pushed his shirt off his shoulders. “The arms and...assorted muscles?”

“The usual way. Lots of work with machines when I was younger. And now I have a terribly disreputable friend who makes me box with him. I always lose but he buys the drinks after,” Fitz added with a fond twist of his mouth. “I think he likes bringing me into his club to shock people.”

Perhaps he could teach her how to throw a punch, later. She could punch someone she'd always disliked—Mr. Sitwell's smirking face came to mind—and truly complete the destruction of her reputation. She liked the idea of Fitz having disreputable friends too, people to get him into trouble and back out again, people who might talk with him in corners and drag him out at night.

“Do you think he could sneak me into his club too?” she asked, temporarily distracted from her mission by the thought of the libraries that some private clubs were rumored to contain. “I've always wanted to get a look at the books inside a private club. Some are supposed to have quite unique collections of atlases and I'm sure that I could disguise myself as a man for a really exceptional atlas.”

“Were you aware that you bring immense amounts of trouble, Miss Simmons?”

“Not before I met you,” she replied pertly and stepped out of her petticoats. “It's nearly eleven, you know. I think that I ought to kiss you again.”

Kissing Leo Fitz for the second time was delightful. Sublime. Soaring up the list of her all-time favorite activities to surpass dancing, croquet, and country walks and making quite a serious challenge to gardening. So lovely, in fact, that she forgot she was supposed to do anything besides kiss him. 

When the resounding thump of the wrought iron knocker on Fitz's front door came, accompanied by loud shouts, the scurrying of servants, and some very undignified banging, she was perched on Fitz's lap in her chemise and corset, hair unpinned, arms around his neck, and kissing him with single-minded dedication. She was not, however, technically ruined. 

“Jemma Anne Simmons!” Her mother's voice sounded through the house like a battle cry. In a prior life, Jemma thought dazedly as she scrambled to her feet, her mother would have been an excellent actress.

“Jemma Anne Simmons!” The voice sounded closer now. Her mother must have elbowed her way past Fitz's poor butler and was probably charging up the stairs.

“Here, take my robe.” Fitz thrust it towards her.

“But--” She was supposed to look disheveled

“There's an awful draft in the hallway at night,” Fitz explained. The robe did look lovely and warm, in a rich red fabric with draping sleeves, and the look of concern on his face as he draped it around her shoulders sent a wave of warmth through her. 

“I demand to see my daughter immediately.” The voice was almost at the door now, piercing through the wood. Fitz positioned himself in front of her and swung the door open with a wince.

Lady Margaret Simmons had been the great beauty of her day, known for her delicate features and delicate nature. She had sighed with delight at the first flowers of spring and nearly swooned during a particularly dramatic moment at the theater. The day after she had married Jemma's father, though, her true nature had asserted herself. Lady Simmons had a will made of iron, the spirit of a conquerer, and the cunning mind necessary to get whatever her other qualities could not obtain. Peers of the realm usually quailed before her gaze. Jemma was quite proud of Fitz for only twitching a little when Lady Simmons fixed him with her iron stare.

“I have some business to discuss with my daughter, Mr. Fitz. First, I will require you to step aside. Then, we will discuss how to conceal this scandal before anyone gets so much as a whisper of it. Then, you will release my daughter and we shall both be spared the sight of you for the rest of our lives,” Lady Simmons said crisply. “I am afraid that I have already glimpsed far too much plaid for any polite house.”

Fitz didn't move. Jemma reached for his hand and grabbed it tightly as her mother went on. Surely even Lady Margaret Simmons couldn't conceal her daughter being found in the bedroom of an untitled Scot at an indecent hour of the night—she had calculated every part of the plan to particularly scandalize her mother's sensibilities. Something like this couldn't be swept aside with her brother's gambling debts and her younger sister's low-cut gowns. It couldn't. 

“Jemma, you will do as I say. As far as the rest of London knows, you went home early from a dinner and spent the night lying in bed with a cold compress for your headache. Miss Johnson, I am sure, will vouch for your story as a friend who has a care for your reputation.”

Behind her, Daisy opened her mouth to say something but Lady Simmons barreled on.

“Your father will never know. Your fiance will never know. If _Mr. Fitz_ ,” she uttered the word with as much scorn as possible. “If Mr. Fitz ever so much as dares to breathe a word of what happened this night, I shall do my level best to ensure he never makes another business deal with a member of the _ton_. And in two days' time, you will put on a white dress and be the loveliest bride of the season. Do you understand me?”

“I'm afraid I don't, Mother. Not at all.”

It was a risk. A foolish, headlong risk that she had barely stopped to consider before taking it and perhaps her last chance at escape before her mother whisked her off in the family carriage and set about making the events of the evening vanish. Perhaps it was even her best chance of all.

“And why not?” her mother snapped.

Jemma took a breath and steeled her spine against whatever might come next. 

“Because I love Mr. Fitz. And I'm going to marry him.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You're going to marry him?” her mother gasped, drawing herself up to her full height.

“You're going to marry him?” Daisy said, her jaw falling slightly open.

“You're going to marry _me_?” Fitz asked, looking slightly confused.

“Of course I'm going to marry you, darling,” she said and beamed up at him. “I told you I would when you proposed.”

“You proposed to her?” Her mother's voice was getting high enough to break glass.

“You proposed to her?” Daisy's face couldn't seem to decide whether to look shocked or delighted.

“Of course I proposed to her,” Fitz said and pulled her tight against his side. Jemma could feel his hand trembling slightly against her back but he kept his composure extremely well for a man who had just been informed that he was engaged. “Can we all stop repeating ourselves now?”

“What possibly made you think that you could even dream of proposing to my daughter?” her mother demanded. All her life, Jemma had known that there were three signs that Margaret Simmons was about to fly into a towering fit of rage: the severely raised eyebrows, the mouth compressed into a tight bow of discontent, and two bright spots of color that appeared high on her cheeks. Tonight, though, she had discovered a fourth and entirely new sign of anger, as her mother readied herself for new fights of rage: a motion of her hands that, in a less refined woman, might have been called a clenched fist. 

Fitz opened his mouth to respond but Lady Simmons had evidently meant her question to have no answer for she went on, rather like one of Fitz's trains steaming at high speed across the countryside. “Her family was serving in the court of kings and fighting for the glory of England while yours were herding sheep and likely drinking themselves into a stupor somewhere in the wilds of Scotland,” Lady Simmons said. “For someone of her station to stoop as low as to marry you is an upheaval to the entire order upon which our country is founded. “

“Never mind the fact that Fitz's fortune has been conveniently rescuing several other people of the same station,” Daisy muttered under her breath.

“We simply cannot stand for this kind of thing,” Lady Simmons declared. “Dogs would run wild in the streets, commoners would storm the most exclusive clubs, the skies themselves would--”

“I asked your daughter to marry me because she is the most extraordinary woman I have ever had the privilege of meeting,” Fitz interrupted. “Because she is brilliant and kind and funny and the light of every room she walks into and she deserves far better than being dressed in pearls and silks and put on display in some ungentle gentleman's country house. And because I hope to make her as happy as I possibly can. I know that happiness is not exactly prized among your set but I am unfashionable enough to hope to be able to make my wife happy as well as admired.”

It was the longest speech she had ever heard Fitz make. It was perhaps the longest speech she had ever heard anyone make to her mother without being immediately overruled. It came very close to convincing her that Leo Fitz was the best man she had ever known. It did not, however, convince her mother that Fitz should marry her.

“Jemma will be _happy_ when she is the wife of a lord,” Lady Simmons said, managing to make happiness sound about three decades out of style. “And if she does not obey me this very moment and come home, I will ensure that both she and you are very unhappy indeed.”

“Right then,” Fitz said, nodding. “You've made your position very clear on the matter. I suppose there's nothing left for us to do except—run!”

He darted to the side and pulled Jemma alongside after him, through the door, down the long flight of stairs, and out the side doors of his house to the street and a waiting carriage. Neither of them were dressed for a mad dash through his house, the robe twisting around her ankles and the tails of Fitz's shirt streaming out behind him, but they made quite good time to the carriage. Behind them, she could hear her mother's shouts and a quieter sound which was likely Daisy's attempts to stall her with reasonable discussion. Then there came a loud crash and the sound of a genteel lady trying very hard not to use unladylike words. Daisy must have abandoned the reasonable discussion and accidentally pushed something into her mother's path instead. 

“I had a carriage ready in case you needed to make a run for it,” Fitz explained as he helped her up into the carriage and swung the door shut behind them. “Of course, I didn't imagine that I'd need to flee too but it's been a night of surprises for us all.”

“I couldn't think what to do. Or say. Or how to stop her from dragging me out and locking me up in my room until the wedding,” Jemma said, staring down at her hands to avoid meeting Fitz's eyes. She had asked him to marry her. No, she had told him to marry her. Only wearing his robe and her undergarments. “And the only thing I could think of was that.”

“It was very clever. And it wasn't—I mean that I wouldn't entirely object to—not that anyone could object to--”

“Sir, where are we headed?” The coachman poked his head in through the window and Fitz looked to Jemma. She just shook her head, unsure where to go. Returning home was out of the question, of course, and most of her acquaintances would turn her in to her mother straightaway. 

“Miss Morse's town house, I think,” Fitz said after a moment. “As fast as you possibly can.”

“Does Miss Morse know that you're going to pay her a call?” Jemma asked when the carriage lurched into motion. 

“No, but she had a premonition that things wouldn't go exactly as planned. I wouldn't be surprised if she were waiting up for us with tea and biscuits.” Fitz leaned his head back against the richly upholstered seat of the carriage and sighed. “I'm sorry, truly. That it didn't work out the way you'd planned.”

“I should have known better.”

“You couldn't have known that she would react like that. Most reasonable society mothers would either whisk their daughters off to the countryside or start planning the wedding breakfast after finding their daughter in a man's bedroom. Some would be downright gleeful about it. I've had a few debutantes attempt to corner me,” Fitz added. “Or mothers thrust their daughters at me.”

“My mother doesn't react like other society mothers. She's a species unto herself. I should have...” She wasn't sure what she should have done. 

“You did everything you could have. And I'll—I'll do whatever you want me to do.” Fitz paused carefully, his hand hovering by hers on the edge of the seat. “Although I suspect that the honorable thing to do would be to marry you after having professed my love in front of your mother. It wouldn't have to be—that is, I wouldn't expect—you could do what you liked. And we could talk about books and orchids and build up quite a nice library, I expect.”

It was not quite a usual proposal, Jemma thought. But it did involve a library. 

“There would be advantages for both of us. I daresay that I could get half the House of Lords clamoring for an invitation to our dinner parties by Michaelmas. You'd make some wonderful business deals off them,” Jemma said, smiling a little at the thought of all the men who'd scoffed at Fitz forced into politeness by the threat of a rescinded invitation or a devastating social cut from the former Miss Simmons. 

“I'd build you a conservatory,” Fitz offered. “Room for as many flowers as you'd like.”

It would certainly not be the marriage that anyone had expected of her. She found that she liked the thought. Her life had been planned out by society matrons from the moment of her birth, from christening gown to wedding gown, from her childhood toys to the toys her own children would play with, and from the bed she had been born in to the bed she would grow old in. No one had bothered to ask her what she might like, of course. Well-bred young ladies never considered what they would like, only what others would. But she liked orchids and books and paintings that were swirls of color and the particular shade of blue of Leo Fitz's eyes. 

“I think that it could be quite a satisfactory arrangement for both of us,” she said in as dignified a manner as anyone could in a robe. The first time that she had been proposed to, she had said all the right things and pressed her hands to her heart and exclaimed over the ring and felt absolutely nothing. This time, she felt...something. Excitement, almost. The kind of glee she'd felt when she was younger and about to open presents on Christmas morning. “A splendid one, in fact.”

“I'd get down on one knee but the carriage might spoil the effect.”

 

They arrived at Bobbi's townhouse at an hour when even the less reputable parts of town were contemplating retreat to their beds. Bobbi was waiting for them, curled up like a cat on her sofa with a mug of tea in hand and a look of intent curiosity on her face. 

“It was her mother, wasn't it?” she said the moment they'd settled themselves before the fire. “I had a feeling that it would be her completely wrecking your plans.”

“You could have said something,” Fitz grumbled.

“You wouldn't have listened. Besides, Lady Simmons terrifies me a little. I'm sure I could face her down if I had to but still...” Bobbi shuddered. Fitz shared the sentiment. “So what are you going to do?”

“We're getting married. Not exactly sure how or when but we are. It's a mutually satisfactory arrangement,” Fitz added awkwardly. Somehow he didn't think that those were quite the right words for it but those were the sort of words Jemma had used, even if they didn't exactly encompass her bright eyes and her fierce look of determination when she talked about teaching herself Greek and the smile she'd had when she kissed him. 

“I see.” Bobbi looked like she had a great many things she wanted to say and was barely holding them in. “You'll need a plan of escape then. I wouldn't put it past Lady Simmons to barricade the city to keep Jemma from getting out.”

“She's probably already commandeered half my relatives. Or worse, she might have told Mr. Ward,” Jemma said and clutched her teacup more tightly. “He has an ancestral sword, of course. He's always wanted to fight a duel with it.”

“A duel?” Fitz didn't know anything about ancestral swords. Or duels. Or that people even still fought duels outside of serialized novels and stage melodramas. Or how to fight a duel. Would he have to fight a duel for Jemma's honor? He had the sinking feeling that there was only one way anything like that could end—the only question, really, was how humiliating his defeat would be.

“You're not going to fight a duel, Fitz,” Bobbi said and pushed the plate of biscuits in his direction, absentmindedly swirling her fork through the jam left over on her plate from the Victoria sponge. She had her strategy face on, brow furrowed, hair swept back into a neat bun, and a look of ferocity on her face much like one Fitz imagined Wellington had had before the battle of Waterloo.

“We are going to launch a public campaign on your behalf,” she finally said with great decisiveness. “Get all of polite society on your side.”

“But none of polite society likes me,” Fitz reminded her. “They tolerate me at best.”

“No one dislikes star-crossed lovers. And no one dislikes you.” Bobbi gestured to Jemma, who after her initial look of confusion, was beginning to look more and more enthusiastic about the idea. Fitz had visions of the headlines already. 

“True love is thought to be very romantic these days,” Jemma agreed. “Are you planning on spreading it to all the papers?”

Bobbi nodded. “My friend Miss Page writes the society column at the Bugle”

“If I could get my grandmother on my side, she'd take half of society with her,” Jemma said. “Perhaps after we go to Gretna Green, we could go visit her and throw ourselves upon her mercy. She'd like the chance to go against my mother.”

“Gretna Green?” Fitz cleared his throat, trying to get his mouth around the words. “You think we should elope then?”

“Of course Fitz! It's terribly romantic.”

 

A few minutes later, it was decided. They would leave for Gretna Green in the morning in one of Bobbi's carriages to avoid detection. In London, Bobbi would have the entire town talking about them by teatime. On the way back down, they'd attempt to win over Jemma's grandmother and then the entirety of London itself. After that, they would be...whatever they were going to be. Fitz still felt a bit dazed by all of it, like a star had come down out of the sky and struck him directly on the head. He didn't quite mind the feeling, though. He'd help a brilliant, beautiful woman escape a marriage she couldn't bear. He thought he might be able to make her happy. She might even want to make him happy too. The odds of him having to fight a duel or having drinks dumped on him by indignant society matrons were very small. And, although he didn't quite want to admit it to himself, a small part of him was wildly, fiercely glad that he'd get to see Jemma Simmons' smile again. Because he hadn't been quite sure how he was supposed to go on without it.

“Do you think that I'm making the right decision?” he asked Bobbi after Jemma had gone up to bed, toying nervously with the teacup in his hands. Bobbi wouldn't steer him wrong, he knew. He hoped. If he was about to make a capital fool of himself, she'd take him aside and tell him so. “That our plan has a chance of working out?”

“I think so,” Bobbi said quietly. “But I think that even if I told you the plan hadn't the faintest chance of working out, you'd both do it anyway. And I think you know why, Fitz.”

He told himself that he didn't.


	5. Chapter 5

Jemma Simmons was supposed to be on married on a Sunday morning in church, wearing a white gown tailored exactly to her specifications by Frederick Worth and carrying a bouquet of roses. Everything from the carriage she would arrive at the church in to the five courses that would be served at the wedding breakfast to the exact cut of her fiance's coat had been planned out by her mother. She had had very little to say about it. In fact, from the first moment Mr. Ward had placed the wretched ring on her finger, she had felt like she was sleepwalking through all of it, letting people poke her with pins and move little cards with people's names on them about plans of rooms, half in a dream and half somewhere else entirely.

Now, after two days of jouncing up and down in a borrowed coach as they zigged and zagged across half of England in an attempt to evade anyone who might have been set to follow them, it was that very Sunday morning. Jemma was wearing a crumpled blue traveling dress borrowed from Bobbi Morse which had acquired splashes of mud along its hem and one unfortunate stain from the greasy cottage pie they had ordered at a dingy pub along the way. There had been plenty of flowers on the way north, although all of the kind that her mother's preferred florist would have fainted at the sight of. Fitz himself was wearing a massive brown overcoat that threatened to dwarf him but did an excellent job of concealing the deplorable state of his clothes. Every last part of her ached from sleeping in the coach and she was halfway to murdering someone for a hot bath and a feather bed. Everything she had eaten for the past few days involved mushy peas, pie crust, and questionable meat. But when they stopped the coach to rest the horses, the air was fresh and bracing and clear. The heather spread across the moors in a sea of purple that she wanted to memorize the sight of them. Fitz let her make a pillow of his shoulder and only grumbled moderately about it. And, on the morning when she was supposed to be married, Jemma Simmons felt very awake.

“Do we have to find a parson or can just anyone marry us?” Jemma asked as Fitz helped her down from the carriage. It was early morning in Gretna Green and the village was still quiet, only a few puffs of white smoke rising from the chimneys as the sun crept over the horizon.

“Anyone, I think. It's traditional to have a blacksmith but we could go rogue and find a carpenter or a mason.”

As it turned out, the only person awake at that hour who didn't scowl at the sight of them was the local doctor, who'd been awake attending to a patient and agreed to witness their marriage after he had his coffee and morning bun. “Strange,” he said, briefly sticking out his hand to both of them before turning back to the coffee pot. “Dr. Stephen Strange. Not in this town by choice.”

There really wasn't much to say to that. Jemma hovered awkwardly in the doorway of the doctor's kitchen and wondered if it would look strange if she held Fitz's hand. Not strange enough to stop her from doing it, she decided and wound her fingers through his and squeezed. Fitz squeezed back. 

“It'll be a good story,” he whispered in her ear. “I particularly like his coat.”

It really was a superb coat: bright crimson, floor-length, covered with embroidery, and spectacularly impractical for a small Scottish border town.

“So do I have to say something? Dearly beloved, any of that rot?” the doctor asked, gesturing with his mug of coffee in one hand and tearing off a bit of bread with the other. 

“Not at all. We'll say our vows, you'll witness it, and that'll be that,” Fitz said. He sounded perfectly confident, standing straight and looking rather handsome for a man who had been traveling for two days straight, but Jemma couldn't help the flash of terror that went through her. A week ago, she could have sworn that she knew the Church of England wedding vows by heart, if admittedly with a sense of dread every time she thought of them. Now they had completely gone out of her head. There was something about holding, she thought wildly, and about sickness and health and a whole lot of other things that she was sure were crucial to the whole thing and that she couldn't remember for the life of her. She was going to marry Leo Fitz in a doctor's kitchen in Scotland and she couldn't even remember the right words for it and she--

“Fitz,” she hissed, looking up at him with wide eyes. “I can't remember the vows.”

“It's—do you know, I think that I can't remember them either.” He took both her hands in his and pulled her closer, smiling even though his eyes were nearly as wide as hers. Perhaps the weight of what they were about to do had hit them both at once. “We'll just have to make them up as best we can. I think they'll be good ones anyway.”

“You're sure?” 

“Completely.”

“And you won't change your mind about it? About any of it?”

“Never,” he promised. “And you...”

“I won't change my mind,” she said. She couldn't even imagine it.“I—I haven't known you for very long but I think I'd like to keep on knowing you for as long as possible.”

“I would too.” Fitz took a deep breath. “Jemma Anne Simmons, will you have me as I am? Cross-country dashes and all, in good times and in bad, whatever comes next?”

“I will,” she breathed. “Leopold Fitz, will you have me as I am? Whatever mad ideas I come up with, in good times and in bad, whatever comes next?”

“I will.” Fitz beamed at her, his fingers lingering on the curve of her cheek as he reached down to tuck a stray strand of hair back in to its proper place. His hands were warm and his eyes were bright and they were standing very close and she didn't feel inclined to move away at all. It must have been less than a minute or two but all the panic seemed to have drained out of her. 

“I'm supposed to say something now, aren't I?” Dr. Strange heaved a massive sigh. “Right—I pronounce you man and wife. You may now kiss the bride.”

“Should I?” Fitz asked.

“I believe that it's traditional.”

Fitz bent down and kissed her, carefully and slowly and with a kind of reverence. It was the kind of kiss she wanted to remember for the rest of her life.

 

“I didn't expect that I'd like kissing you,” she said in the carriage. “Do you think we could do it from time to time?”

Fitz looked like someone had dropped a brick on his head and simultaneously told him that he was the heir to the throne of a small yet economically prosperous kingdom. “I would—that is, I mean we could—it could be a part of our marriage as well. I like kissing you too,” he mumbled and flushed lobster red. 

“Good,” she said firmly and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I hope wherever we're going has a bed.”

Fitz made a small squeaking noise.

“I haven't slept properly for days and days,” she said with a yawn. “And I'd quite like to eat a breakfast that doesn't consist of sausage and beans.”

“I thought we might go to my estate in Scotland? I bought it when I made my first million, just to have a place to go that I really liked,” he explained. “It isn't anything grand but it'll do for a day or two while we prepare to face your grandmother.”

“I'd like that,” she said and promptly fell asleep on his shoulder.

Fitz had been modest. True, his house wasn't studded with Gothic turrets or bristling with flying buttresses in the current style. His grounds weren't studded with ruined follies or atmospheric groves and there wasn't a stained glass window in sight. Instead, there was a house in the gracious Palladian style that had been fashionable in the previous century, made of honey-colored stone and nestled among the trees and overlooking a lake, that nearly took Jemma's breath away as it appeared at the end of the drive. It seemed as if it had always been there, as much a part of the land as the mist still hanging over the lake or the flowers spreading across the grounds. 

“All this is yours?” Houses reflected their people, she thought, and this house was all Fitz. Not flashy or loud but sure of what it was and of its worth, likely to stay constant after gaudier things have come and gone.

“I'm afraid so. Not exactly in style, I know, but I like it.”

“Fitz, it's splendid,” she said simply and meant it. 

The effect was somewhat spoiled, however, by the man sitting on Fitz's front steps. He was wearing a salmon pink coat, holding Angus in his lap, had a large bruise spreading across one cheekbone, and looked thoroughly disreputable. Neither the coat nor the man were quite in harmony with the landscape. (Her family's gardener would have keeled straight over.) She thought she knew him from somewhere but she couldn't quite place where—one of her family's massive galas perhaps? Or another of the endless weekend parties she had been forced to smile and grit her teeth through?

“Don't worry,” Fitz said cheerfully. “He's a friend.”

“Oy!” the man on the steps shouted. “I've been waiting ages and your housekeeper still won't let me in. I think she's never quite gotten over the business with the fishpond.”

“It was quite a dramatic business with the fishpond,” Fitz said as he leaned out the window. “What on earth are you doing at my house, Hunter?”

“Lance Hunter?” Jemma asked and peered out alongside Fitz. The last time she had seen Lance Hunter, he had been ten and wreaking havoc in the nursery by attempting to stage a revolt in demand of more pudding, but there was something about the stubborn lines of his face that seemed just the same. “Aren't we related somehow?”

“Distant cousins, I think. Oh hell,” Hunter said and sighed. “Does that mean I'll have to challenge Fitz to a duel for your honor too?”

“What do you mean, too?” Fitz asked slowly, a look of horror stealing across his face. “Someone can't challenge me to a duel when I'm not there, can they?”

“No. But they've been challenging me on your behalf,” Hunter said mournfully. “I've been slapped in the face with more gloves in the past three days than in the last twenty-some years of my life.”

“You didn't fight any of them, did you?”

“'Course not. They all wanted sabres at dawn and that kind of rot. I did punch one of them when he made a nasty comment about your mother—that's how I got this.” Hunter gestured to the bruise. “I thought I'd better get out of town before some idiot decided to defend Jemma's honor by pushing me into the Thames. I couldn't even have a drink in peace at the club without being challenged by some bloke with his grandad's sword.”

Jemma knew exactly what kind of idiot was behind this. It had her fiance's leather-glove clad fingerprints all over it. Ex-fiance now, she thought with a tinge of delight. She'd never have to pretend interest in one of his long-winded hunting stories ever again or admire his horsemanship while freezing to death in an unpleasant stable yard. Even better, she'd never have to stand for any of his nonsense ever again. Starting with this.

“Well, that's just absurd,” she said. “I'll put an end to it right away. No one challenges my husband to a duel.”

“Or your disreputable distant cous—wait.” Hunter's ears must have finally caught up with his mouth. “You married her? Fitz, have you met her mother?”

“I have. She stormed my house when she heard Jemma was there and proceeded to forbid me from even thinking of marrying her daughter. Not an auspicious beginning, but I'm holding out hope that our second meeting may be slightly more amiable. I think that bringing the dog along may help,” Fitz added as Angus wriggled free of Hunter's arms and raced around in circles to bark at the carriage, the coachman, the front door, and anything else that could be barked at. “Why did you bring him with you, by the way?”

“Your butler refused to be left alone in the house with him. And I thought he might be good company. Loyal companion, supposedly. That was before I discovered that his loyalty could be bought with a sausage,” Hunter said darkly. 

 

The state of things in London was dramatic even by the standards of the season, as Fitz and Jemma gathered after they'd finally made it inside the house and reconvened over tea and scones. Jemma's mother had been trumpeting the news of her daughter's disappearance to anyone who would listen. Jemma's former fiance, when not urging his friends to challenge men to duels who were perfectly happy having a drink and minding their own bloody business, thank you (as Hunter said), had been skulking about and practicing his sword moves. And Jemma's dearest friend Miss Daisy Johnson, who she had never appreciated more than this moment, had been avidly spreading the story of Jemma's whirlwind star-crossed romance all over London and winning everyone she could over to her side of the story. Heated debates had begun to break out at the dinner table. Mothers weren't speaking to their daughters. In a town that had never been starved for scandal, it was a feast beyond all imagining. 

“I hate to say it, but I think we'll have to have a party when we get back to town,” Jemma told Fitz. “Preferably with my grandmother in attendance giving us her blessing.”

Fitz winced, just a little. 

“I'll smuggle refreshments over to which corner you want to skulk in, don't worry.” Jemma rested her hand on top of his and tried to make her voice sound reassuring. She knew that Fitz didn't exactly like parties—and he certainly had good reasons for it—but she'd invite all the right sorts of people, the kind you could really talk to, and hire that new French orchestra and have the kind of pastries that he liked and she...They'd be in it together and after everyone left, they could lock the doors and sit in peace together. 

“Of course I won't skulk,” Fitz said. “I'll be dancing with my wife.”

Jemma beamed at him. Hunter muttered something darkly under his breath about married couples.

 

She and Fitz had separate bedrooms. Connected by a door, of course, but decidedly separate. She'd met very few couples who actually shared a bedroom and anyway her sisters had always told her that she stole all the covers. Still, the bed in the room the housekeeper had shown her to for the night was far too massive, an ocean of covers and pillows that was immensely comfortable but that she couldn't seem to fall asleep in. A few hours ago, she'd been ready to commit a minor crime for a warm bed and now that she had one, sleep was a near impossibility. 

She shut her eyes tight and tried to think peaceful thoughts. They were interrupted by visions of duels and her mother trying to bludgeon Fitz with her parasol in Hyde Park. Jemma sighed, turned over, turned over again, and got up.

“Fitz!” she whispered and knocked on his door, quilt wrapped around her. “Fitz!”

“What is it?” He opened the door bleary-eyed, his hair standing up at all kinds of angles and his robe haphazardly tied around his waist. It was rather adorable. “Is something the matter?”

“I can't sleep. Can I come in for a bit?”

Fitz didn't reply, just swung the door open and stepped aside to let her in. His bed was even more enormous than hers and it appeared as if he definitely had better pillows. Jemma immediately perched on a corner of it, pulling the blankets around herself, and watched as Fitz slid into the bed opposite her. 

“Did you want to talk?” he asked.

“A little.” She'd wanted to be near him too. A little. 

Later, she wouldn't remember what they'd talked about. Only that his voice had been quiet and calming and he had listened to her every word. Only that he had let her lean against his side again and that he had idly twisted her curls around his finger as she talked. Only that she had kissed him before they fell asleep curled around each other, soft and light and quick.

They might not talk about it in the morning, she knew. She'd remember it perfectly anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

Leo Fitz was baffled. Two and a half weeks ago, he would have never thought of using that word to describe himself. Two and a half weeks ago, he had never met Jemma Simmons. Two and a half weeks ago, in fact, his life had been quite well ordered. Occasionally awkward, to be sure, and not quite as exciting or bright. And now here he was, having been challenged to multiple duels by proxy, in bed with the loveliest woman he had ever met (who was currently using him as a pillow and making the nerves in his shoulder twinge but that was beside the point), and married. To Jemma Simmons.

He tested the word out on his tongue. “Married.”

Jemma made a small indistinct noise next to him. 

“My feelings exactly,” Fitz muttered. True, he liked the thought of waking up next to her every morning. And imagining the look on her face when he presented her with her conservatory. (He'd already commissioned a set of plans from his preferred architect.) And nearly everything about her. And she'd said that she wanted to keep on kissing him. But what if she changed her mind? She certainly had the right to, if she decided that she didn't want to spend the rest of her life steering an upstart Scot through society.

“Jemma,” he said. “What are we doing?”

“Sleeping,” she mumbled and turned over, tugging at him. “Come back.”

“Besides sleeping, I mean. What are we going to do when we get back to London?”

“Live,” she said and burrowed into his shoulder. “Be. And if anyone so much as makes an attempt at snubbing you socially, I shall be quite wrathful.”

“I'm glad you're on my side.”

“Always. That comes along with it, doesn't it?” she said and yawned. “We'll always be on each other's sides.”

“I'm not sure what sort of marriage we're going to have,” Fitz confessed. “Or what you'd like of me.”

“I'm not quite sure either.” She propped herself up against the dashboard, drawing the blankets around her, and wound her fingers through his. “This is all quite sudden and I—three weeks ago, I thought that my life was going to be something very different. Then I thought it was going to be something else altogether and now it's proved to be something different from anything I could have possibly imagined. A good different but...do you think we could muddle through it together?”

“So you're slightly baffled too?”

She nodded. Fitz let out a sigh of relief. 

“Will you stay with me again tomorrow night? Not like that,” he blurted out, turning pink. “Only I liked waking up with you.”

“Of course. I know!” Jemma sat bolt upright, the blankets falling around her waist. Her nightgown was a remarkably modest affair. Fitz tried not to stare anyway. “We'll draw up a contract. Not a legally binding one. An agreement to outline what we've promised each other. So we know what to expect.”

Fitz wasn't sure he'd ever know what to expect from her. But he agreed anyway.

 

_Agreement Between Mr. Leopold Fitz and Miss Jemma Simmons, on the event of their marriage,_  
1\. Fitz will give his honest opinion on Jemma's horticultural experiments, even when his opinion may not be glowing.  
2\. Jemma will give her honest opinion on Fitz's inventions, even when they seem likely to explode into puffs of smoke and a thousand tiny gears.  
3\. Fitz and Jemma will always be honest with each other, whatever comes their way.  
4\. Angus will be allowed to sleep in the bedroom but not in the bed.   
5\. There will be one bedroom, a fact to be reassessed in a month's time. Jemma will do her best not to steal all the covers.   
6\. Fitz will dance at least one dance with Jemma at every party they attend. He insists.  
7\. If they're going to plot, they will plot together.  
8\. If they're going on an adventure, they will adventure together.  
9\. They will stay by each other's sides. Simple as that.

 

Jemma liked having things written down. Simple and clear, in her best penmanship, every last detail spelled out. Fitz, however, argued against setting an exact time and a rota for menus for afternoon tea and eventually she had to concede that he made some good points. Their plans had a way of veering off into unexpected directions, after all. If they tried to plan an afternoon tea, they'd probably end up halfway to America before they got to the cucumber sandwiches. 

“I quite like it,” she said, peering over Fitz's shoulder, and dropped a quick kiss on his cheek. “Though I would like it to be noted that the covers are not a guarantee.”

“You're ruthless,” Fitz sighed and slid an arm around her waist to tug her closer. “Any other additions you'd like to make?”

“No, I think it's splendid as it is. It certainly should do to present to my grandmother.”

“To your grandmother?”

“It'll be supporting documentation.” Her grandmother was awfully fond of supporting documentation. Jemma hadn't thought the idea quite that horrifying but Fitz looked as if she had just told him she was going to strand him in a cave of lions with only a pillow for company. “She's not nearly as terrifying as the stories make her out to be, you know.”

“So she didn't single-handedly incapacitate a man with a string of pearls and an ostrich-feather fan?” Fitz asked.

“That one's mostly true,” Jemma admitted. (There had also been a high-heeled shoe involved.)

“And she didn't defeat a French spy at Almack's, preventing him from assassinating the Prince of Wales and only missing one dance in the process? Or save the entire city of London from a deadly poisonous fog concocted by Napoleon's scientists? Or rescue an entire orphanage's worth of children?”

“It sounds a good deal more dramatic when you put it all together. I promise she'll like you,” Jemma said firmly. “Grandmother Peggy has always had a soft spot for men with courage and kind hearts.”

Fitz made a small scoffing noise. “'m not exactly courageous,” he said. “Downright terrified of spiders and everything.”

“You ran off to Scotland with me. And before that, you were going to help me escape marriage to a man I cared nothing for. And before that, you made your fortune by twenty-one with nothing more than your own wits and sheer stubbornness and made your way in society surrounded by people who would have liked nothing more than to see you fail. That sounds courageous to me,” she said. Most of the young men of her acquaintance had done far less with much more than Fitz had, preferring to spend their days drinking and carousing with no thought of their future and neglecting the few responsibilities they did have. Fitz, on the other hand, had begun with nothing more than a few designs sketched out on rough brown paper, a prototype built of junkyard scraps, and the sheer determination that had taken him from door to door until he found an investor willing to take a chance on him. (Hunter had told her stories of Fitz's early career over breakfast that morning, while Fitz was meeting with his steward to go over the accounts, and accompanied them with poorly done accents and dramatic hand gestures.)

“You flatter me.”

“Nonsense. You're one of the bravest men I've ever met. And you're clever and kind and thoughtful and funny when you choose to be and I—I like you very much,” she blurted out inelegantly. “Very, very much.”

“I, er, I'm glad of it. I like you very much as well. I suspect I have since you first cornered me behind a potted plant.” Fitz smiled at her, a soft light in his blue eyes. 

Hearts, of course, were scientifically incapable of doing a jig of delight in their owner's chest. Jemma's did anyway.

Fitz made shortbread that afternoon, from his grandmother's recipe. He cajoled the cook into letting him have free rein of the kitchen and mixed the dough with a look of careful concentration, so intent on his task that he didn't even notice the smear of flour across his nose. Jemma thought it rather adorable.

“You don't want to know the sorts of promises I had to make to my grandmother to be allowed to write this down,” he told her. “The recipe is a Fitz family secret. Centuries old, apparently, and once praised by the king of Scotland himself. My grandmother made it for me every birthday. We couldn't afford cake but shortbread's simple enough—butter, sugar, and flour.”

Jemma Simmons had had exquisite cakes crafted by the queen's personal pastry chef himself. Concoctions of puff pastry and lemon cream meant to be admired by all. Spectacular wedding cakes three stories tall. She liked Fitz's shortbread better than any of them.

She liked the way his smile felt against her mouth when she kissed him even more.

 

The next day, they set out for her grandmother's country house, an elegant manor that Peggy Carter had retired to as soon as she could reasonably abandon the London Season. There, surrounded by roses, books, and a pack of corgis, she entertained her brood of grandchildren at least three times a year, visited with her neighbors and dear friends the Starks (American upstarts whose presence in the neighborhood had scandalized everyone else), and according to rumor, discreetly oversaw the operations of a top-notch network of British spies. The Carter house had always been Jemma's favorite place to go as a child. There, she could wander the gardens for hours and ask the gardeners questions about how they cultivated the thousands of roses that filled the grounds without being called away and scolded for getting mud on the hems of their dress. There, she wasn't expected to constantly manage her younger siblings, keeping them safely penned in the nursery during an endless round of dinner parties. There, she could read and think and for a few fleeting moments, breathe.

Now, as their carriage rolled up the drive, Jemma felt the knot of tension that had been buried deep in her chest since the first moment Mr. Ward had slipped a diamond on her finger finally loosen and unravel completely. Her grandmother would hear her out. She would help strategize and plot and plan. And, best of all, she would like Fitz. Jemma couldn't imagine her grandmother doing otherwise.

“She has a way of getting straight to the heart of people,” Jemma told him as they alighted from the carriage, her hand still in his when they turned to face the grand front door. She had taken his hand halfway through the drive without even thinking about it and then, when he glanced down at their joined hands with a smile, had been so bold as to move from opposite him in the carriage and settle herself beside Fitz on the seat. True, she had been shockingly bold with him behind closed doors. (When she remembered that night in his townhouse, she could hardly keep herself either from blushing or from stubbornly calculating the odds of it happening again soon.) But entering her grandmother's house on his arm felt like something entirely different. As if she were publicly declaring her allegiance. 

Then, in a way, she supposed she was.

Properly speaking, they should have been announced by the butler and bowed into the drawing room. However, Peggy Carter claimed that she was far too old to stand on ceremony and greeted Jemma at the door herself at the first ring of the bell, the disgruntled butler miles behind her in the hall as she ushered Jemma and Fitz in.

“Jemma,” she said. “It's so lovely to see you again. I had a feeling that you might be visiting.”

“Which one of them wrote to you?” It would have been her mother, most likely. But it very well could have been her father or perhaps even one of her younger siblings, anxious

“Nobody needed to tell me. I get the London newspapers in.” 

She had nearly forgotten about the newspapers. Or rather, she had known that it had been all over the scandal sheets. Hunter had even brought one with a caricature she thought was supposed to be her and Fitz, galloping away at midnight on a stallion entirely unlike Fitz's sedate horses. (It had difficult to make out who it was supposed to be under all the tartan, honestly.) But her grandmother got all the respectable papers in. Surely the Telegraph and the Times wouldn't concern themselves with a debutante's affairs? Then Jemma remembered the gleam in Daisy's eye as she talked about her scandal-mongering skills and immediately reconsidered. 

“So people are still, er, talking about it?”

“People will be talking about it for the next year at least,” her grandmother said dryly. “Two if the next Season proves to be free of scandal.”

Fitz squeaked. Peggy turned to look at him, head tilted slightly to one side as she assessed him. “So tell me, Mr. Fitz,” she asked. “How did you come to wed my granddaughter?”

“She cornered me behind a potted palm and asked me to ruin her,” Fitz blurted out.

It hadn't quite been the way that Jemma had planned to reveal her plan (and how it had all gone horribly, unstoppably awry and then quite suddenly right) to her grandmother. There had been a set of reasoned arguments based on the rules of classical rhetoric. But she had forgotten the power of the Carter look.

Fitz performed quite admirably after that, however. He discreetly avoided any mention of the question of whether or not the planned ruination had actually occurred or of the insults that Jemma's mother had thrown his way. He talked of his businesses and his inventions with eloquence and excitement but never bragged of his wealth. He told stories about his childhood in Scotland and his family, admitting details that she suspected would have taken her months to uncover. And he didn't even flinch when offered a tour of the gallery featuring six centuries' worth of portraits of Jemma's ancestors. 

“Do you care for him, Jemma?” Peggy asked. Fitz had wandered off to the other end of the long gallery, peering at a portrait of a distant ancestor who appeared to be clutching a cat and a jar of spices. “Truly? Because if you--”

“I do. More than I ever imagined when I first met him.” There were a thousand things that she wanted to say about Fitz, about his brilliant mind and wide smile and kind eyes but she couldn't find the words for them. 

“I do,” she said again, hoping to put every ounce of the way she had felt when she had woken up to see Fitz beside her that morning, still half-asleep in the morning sunlight and looking at her like she was a marvel. “I swear it.”

“Do you love him then?” Peggy's eyes were sharp and bright as they flitted between Jemma and Fitz and Jemma could have sworn that she spied the slightest hint of a smile on her grandmother's lips.

“I'm not sure yet,” Jemma said slowly. “But I think that someday soon I will.”


	7. Chapter 7

“I hope you have a plan already,” her grandmother had said, before she saw them off and after pressing three hampers' worth of food for the journey, a set of finely embroidered table linens, and a set of wedding rings that Jemma was fairly sure were precious family heirlooms on them. “For making your debut as a couple in society.”

“We're going to have a party. You're invited, of course.” Jemma dimpled at Peggy. “I was actually hoping you might agree to be our guest of honor. We'll enlist an entire contingent of the peerage to bring you cake and lemonade and tell you all their secrets.”

“I'd be delighted. Although I do hope that you don't think I need other people to tell me their secrets to find them out.” Peggy said wryly.

“I would never,” Jemma promised, pressing her hand dramatically to her heart, and couldn't help laughing at her grandmother's raised eyebrow. Then her grandmother was laughing too, smiling fondly at her and Fitz, and Jemma felt a wave of warmth go through her. She had thought—she had known—that her grandmother would like Fitz. But it had still been nice to see her approving look as Fitz talked of how carefully he designed his inventions or have her pastry chef bring out the pear and chocolate tarts that she only reserved for her favorite guests. And it had been something quite a bit more than nice to know that when she had said that she truly cared for Fitz, Peggy Carter had believed her. 

“See,” Jemma said to Fitz in the carriage, rummaging about in one of the hampers for jam and scones. “That wasn't nearly as terrifying as you imagined, was it?”

“You weren't there when she was asking me questions about whether or not I planned on having any children,” Fitz grumbled. “And whether I had any unfortunate family names that my family would insist on having passed down.”

Jemma nearly dropped the jam, the scones, and the entire basket. It had been a sensible question to ask, she supposed. If a tad premature.

“Well, are there?” she asked when she had secured the jam. “Strange names that mean rock or bloody revolution against the English or something?”

“Of course not. We're not idiots, you know. Bit of profiteers, apparently,” Fitz said. “My great-great-great grandfather shoed the horse of a British soldier once. The entire village didn't talk to the Fitz family for five years.”

 

Fitz wasn't exactly a party planner. Or a party-goer. Or a party much of anything, come to think of that. But Jemma had unearthed a notebook and a fountain pen from somewhere and she had a dangerous gleam in her eye and she was talking about booking a French orchestra that Countess Romanoff had had at her last ball that no one else had been able to hire. Fitz wasn't exactly sure how you went about hiring a French orchestra but if his wife wanted one, he was certainly going to help her get it.

“When did you want to have the ball?” he asked in the midst of a disquisition about flower arrangements.

“As soon as possible after we get back, I think. Would two weeks be absolutely impossible? The social calendar may already be quite full—we'll have to go to quite a few teas and garden parties, I'm afraid,” Jemma warned him. “How good are you at croquet?”

“Good if I cheat.”

“Perfect. Nearly everybody does.” Jemma tapped the pen thoughtfully against the page. “We'll dazzle the ton at a series of social events and then, when we have the ball, everyone will be falling over themselves for an invitation. They'll witness us being madly in love, you'll have your pick of investors for the new railroad, and maybe people will even stop challenging you to duels. We just have to be perfectly charming at all times.”

“Perfectly charming at all times. Of course.” Fitz nodded and took another gulp of tea, silently wishing for something stronger.

In Greek mythology, Hercules had had to perform twelve labors. Slaying beasts, stealing girdles, that sort of thing. Fitz supposed that the next two weeks would be the Labors of Leopold Fitz.

 

The first labor: Paying a social call on Sir Nicholas Fury and his wife, the undisputed heads of the London social scene. And each and every one of the elaborate rituals that accompanied being able to pay a call in the first place. Calling cards were to be made, with Jemma's new name on them and with a heather border that was meant to vaguely suggest Scotland, due to Fitz's lack of a family crest, flower, symbol, or family anything. In the carriage on the way to the printer's, he had suggested the family shortbread for the cards but fond as Jemma was of the idea, she did point out that scandalizing the printer might not be the best strategic ploy.

Fitz was to acquire a new suit. And hat. And a new coat of paint for the carriage. And a suitably fashionable way of tying his cravat. His valet was seen poring over plates of the latest styles late at night. If you asked him, it was a production worthy of the theaters of the West End for five minutes to be spent sipping lukewarm tea and eating elaborately frosted biscuits in a drawing room but Jemma dimpled when she saw him in his new suit and adjusted his hat fussily from side to side and it may have been his imagination, but he fancied that they got significantly fewer glares when they took a very public drive through the park together. Sir Fury himself, when they were finally admitted into his presence, proved to be only slightly more intimidating than the stories had it, embroidered eyepatch and all.

“I think he liked you,” Jemma said on the carriage ride home.

“How can you tell?”

“The tea was quite good. Sir Fury always serves the freshest leaves to the people he likes best. I heard that the American ambassador, Mr. Pierce, once got leaves that had been steeped five times already. You did well,” she added and leaned her head on his shoulder with a happy sigh. For that, Fitz supposed that he could drink another cup of tea or two.

The second labor: the Grand Duchess Natasha Romanoff’s garden party. Ever since she had swept into London nearly a year ago with a mysterious past and a remarkable set of jewels, her parties had been highly coveted invitations. Jemma had managed to wheedle one for the two of them through leaning heavily on Daisy’s connections. All sorts of delicacies were to be served, a string quartet had been engaged, and the gossip had it that she had had a cake constructed in the exact shape of the Houses of Parliament. 

The string quartet was quite accomplished. The cake was surprisingly good. The tea sandwiches were good enough that Fitz seriously contemplated asking Jemma to smuggle some back with them. Or at least get the recipe from the Grand Duchess’ cook. Fitz’s dancing skills, however, were mortifyingly inadequate. To be fair, he thought, no one had told him that dancing would be required at a garden party. The Grand Duchess had inventively decided to break new social ground. Fitz had nearly broken an irreparable vase.

So the third labor was decided: dancing lessons, to be given by the same instructor who had coached Jemma through her own debutante ball.

“You did promise to dance with me, you know,” Jemma said over breakfast. 

“And I look forward to it. Just not the learning part. Was your dancing master terrifying?” Fitz asked glumly. “I have visions of someone snapping at your toes with a cane.”

“Oh, there wasn't a cane. She was quite scandalous as far as dancing masters go, actually. A friend of my grandmother's from her time in New York and a former chorus girl. She taught me how to high kick when my parents weren't watching,” Jemma said. Fitz tried not to choke on his toast.

Angie Martinelli did not have a cane. She did, however, have a magnificent hat, a wicked smile, and a very frank way of giving direction. “You'll want to actually hold her like you like it, you know,” she said as she watched Fitz steer Jemma around the floor. “Not like you're holding a glass and trying not to break it.”

“I do like it,” Fitz mumbled and stared down at the floor.

“And no looking at the floor either. Look at your beautiful wife,” she commanded.

Fitz did. And thought that Jemma was still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

 

The fourth labor shouldn't have been a labor at all. Lunch with Bobbi should have been delightful. A respite from the examination of the town and the gossip columnists who followed them from store to store in an attempt to note where Jemma bought her gloves and the breathless schoolgirls who stopped them in the street to ask what it had been like to elope. He had hoped to talk about books and patents and perhaps even tease Bobbi about the fact that Hunter had attempted to pay three calls on her. All that Bobbi wanted to discuss, however, was Jemma.

“Did you ever end up ruining her, by the way?” Bobbi asked as she cheerfully spread butter on her roll. “I imagined that something might have happened up in Scotland but she won't say a word about it.”

“Then what makes you think I will?”

“You always tell me eventually. But I suppose you haven't. You're only looking ordinarily besotted today.” Bobbi tipped her head to one side and examined him. Fitz tried desperately to think about anything else. After Scotland, they had found themselves falling asleep together every night, Jemma curled against him and somehow managing to take up much more of the bed than someone her size should, and waking up together in a tangle of limbs and light. Kissing her was a marvel—nearly every moment with her was a marvel—but they hadn't done much beyond that. It hadn't seemed right, not quite yet. 

“As a matter of fact, we haven't. It's none of your business anyway,” Fitz said weakly. He knew perfectly well that everything was Bobbi's business sooner or later.

Bobbi sipped her tea and gave him very suggestive eyebrows. 

 

In fact, Fitz was convinced that all his friends had banded together to ask him leading questions about the state of his marriage and slowly drive him mad. It wasn't even that they wanted to gossip about it, although he'd spotted Bobbi and Daisy huddled together in a corner and shooting speculative looks at him and Jemma on more than one occasion. It was more that they all seemed to have become as invested in his marriage as the hordes of reporters that followed him about town, if not even more so. 

“So how long had you been in love with her for? The bookmakers are taking odds on it now, you know. Right now it's 2:1 on you falling in love at the first ball you both attended,” Hunter said as he tipped dangerously back in one of Fitz's wing chairs, newspaper draped over his chest. He had claimed that he'd only called to present Jemma with his mother's regards and make another attempt at winning over the dog but he'd rapidly made himself at home in Fitz's library and launched into a cheerful interrogation. 

“Everyone keeps on asking me that,” Fitz said and pretended to be engrossed in an article about the price of cabbages. No need to mention that he kept on asking himself that. Jemma would tuck herself into his side or curl up in the window seat with a leather-bound novel or drag him outdoors to see a new plant that had flowered or simply come down the stairs to breakfast, hair already escaping its elegant twist and the morning light brushing her skin...and his heart would stutter hopelessly and he would forget everything he had been thinking about only a moment before. She fascinated him and she astonished him and she...she was Jemma. And that fact seemed nothing short of marvelous.

“You faced down her mother, whisked her off to Scotland, went to meet her grandmother, accepted the threat of a duel just to marry her, and every time she enters the room, you look at her like the sun rises and sets with her. Either you're in love or you're completely mad. Of course, you'd have to be halfway mad to be in love in the first place, anyway,” Hunter mused. “Next thing we know, you'll be wandering the gardens composing love sonnets to her left eyebrow and--”

“Jemma is the most astonishing woman I have ever met,” Fitz admitted from behind his newspaper. He was fairly certain that even the tips of his ears were turning red. “And marrying her is perhaps the greatest stroke of luck I have ever had. And I will enlist Bobbi to spread all sorts of devastating rumors about you if you use that to win a bet at your club.”

“No need,” Hunter said happily. “The only bet I had going was one with Miss Johnson.”

 

Jemma had been a completely decorous debutante. Perfectly mannered, flawlessly dressed, and positively demure. Before Fitz, her name had appeared in the newspapers exactly twice, upon her birth and upon her betrothal to Mr. Ward. Now, she could open up any scandal sheet and see at least five articles about her, a breathless account of her most recent outfit, and a rather flattering, if physically impossible, caricature.

“No woman's waist could possibly be that tiny,” she told Fitz and the newspaper. “She'd have to be missing several vital organs.”

“I think my favorite was the one of you climbing out your window on a rope made of tartan to my waiting carriage. I particularly liked the way they completely invented a coat of arms for me,” Fitz said wryly. “I'm fairly certain that there's a steam train in the corner.”

“I'm still not quite sure why the newspapers seem to be so fond of us. At the last party we went to, two ladies wore suspiciously similar gowns, punch was deliberately spilled down both of those dresses, Mr. Parker was spotted hanging upside down from one of the Grecian statues in the gardens...and all anyone could read about in the papers the next day was which dances we had danced together and how frequently you had brought me a cup of lemonade,” Jemma said. “They're going soft in their old age.”

“Everyone likes a love story. It's quite funny, actually,” Fitz said thoughtfully. “When I was respectable—as respectable as someone who'd made his own money could be, anyway—I couldn't have gotten a good morning from an impoverished minor baronet. It turns out that all I had to do was run away with an eligible young lady.”

“They would have come around eventually. Once they'd gotten to know you. Perhaps with a few subtle social maneuvers on Bobbi's part,” Jemma added after a moment's consideration.

“More than a few, I think.”

“Three at the very most. I suspect that they would have realized how brilliant you were before long.” But she was the only one who knew what he looked like when he woke up and rolled over to bury himself in the blankets in protest, or the massive amounts of sugar he poured into his tea outside of polite company, or the way he leaned into her touch when they kissed and it made a small sun of satisfaction radiate inside her. “I only wish that I could keep the secret of your dancing skills to myself a little while longer.”

“I promise you that no one will narrowly avoid stepping on your toes with as much grace as I will.”

“Then no one else will even come near my toes the entire night. Even if it creates an immense scandal.” She thought she might enjoy that, truthfully.

Fitz beamed at her, smile wide-open and delighted, and she abandoned her toast and jam to go to his side of the table and kiss him thoroughly. The maid nearly dropped a salver of sausages. The butler shot them a very disapproving look. Half her family would no doubt have fainted dead away if they could have seen her. Jemma thought that right there—in Fitz's arms, with the golden morning light streaming in around them, his pulse beating against her own—was perhaps the happiest she had ever been. 

“There's something I want to show you,” he said later that morning, peering around the door of the room where she was busily rearranging the seating for the exclusive supper they planned to host before the ball. “A sort of wedding present. I mean, it's not done yet—not entirely, anyway—but I wanted to show you the bit of it that's here now.”

“Do I get to guess at it? You didn't get me a library, did you?” she asked eagerly.

“No, I've decided to save that for your birthday. Come on, it's out in the back garden.” Fitz held out his hand to her and Jemma took it with alacrity. Exactly which eligible bachelor Daisy wished to be seated next to would have to determined later.

“I didn't know we had a back garden,” she said.

“We didn't. I bought a bit of land from our neighbors, knocked down the wall between our gardens, and well...” Fitz swept his hand out in front of him. “I've commissioned plans for a larger one to be built at the house at Scotland but I thought that you ought to have something while we're in town too.”

It was a conservatory, all finely wrought glass and steel, nestled between the trees at the end of the garden like it had always been there. It was small but there was still enough room for a tree or two and then for row after row of plants. Orchids, perhaps, something delicate and lovely to match the spun-sugar building. There was a counter where she could tend to her plants and a bench where she could sit and read and breathe in the smell of green and growing things. It was a place that it would be hers

“Fitz,” she whispered. “It's perfect.”

“You like it, then? I only got a few plants for it to begin with—I had to ask Daisy for what she thought you might like—and then I imagined that you'd want to choose the rest yourself. If there's anything you'd like to change, we can do that too. I just, er, I wanted to surprise you. As a present,” he said nervously, tapping one hand against his side. “I just hoped that you would like it.”

“Fitz,” she said and rose up on the tips of her toes to cup his face in her hands. “I love it.”

Before she kissed him, she nearly told him that she loved him too.

 

“I can't believe you stayed silent about the greenhouse for so long,” Jemma told Daisy. “Now I'll have to come up with something even grander to give him.”

“I think that you're more than present enough,” Daisy said, smirking just a little. “I almost felt guilty for taking you away from him for a turn about the garden. But I had gossip to share that would probably make him faint dead away and Bobbi promised to keep him entertained”

“I doubt that Fitz is as innocent or your gossip as scandalous as you make it out to be,” Jemma protested. Then again, considering that the last story Daisy had told her had involved a couple being discovered in a position that she had considered physically impossible before hearing said story, perhaps it was better that Fitz hadn't heard it. The more nights that she spent wrapped up in him, kissing him with a hunger that surprised even her and sighing with happiness at the warmth of his hands on his skin, the more she was convinced that she had to persuade her husband to finally ruin her. And the more she couldn't help worrying that she would somehow do it all wrong. Or that it would be ferociously awkward and she wouldn't be able to look Fitz in the eye for weeks afterward. Or that all the books she'd surreptitiously bought in the hopes of better acquainting herself with the subject had been unreliable sources. 

“Really? Bobbi told me that you and Fitz--” Daisy abruptly stopped upon receiving a piercing look from Jemma. “I shall have to devise some unseemly jokes about Scotsmen, then.”

“How much have you and Bobbi been discussing the state of my marriage?” she asked.

“We only do it occasionally. Only when the two of you do things that would be sickeningly sweet if anyone else did them or make eyes at each other in public,” Daisy said. “We're only human.”

“I've never made eyes at anyone in my life,” Jemma protested.

Daisy made a noise that suggested she would very much like to demur but was slightly intimidated by the aggressive way Jemma was swinging her parasol about.

 

The ball arrived much more quickly than it was supposed to. Jemma interviewed temperamental French chef after temperamental French chef, arranged and rearranged the flowers through an entire breakfast until Fitz told her firmly that they looked lovely and brought her a platter of toast and eggs, fended off several ill-advised attempts by people who she had never much liked to win an invitation from her, listened to orchestras play until she very nearly became tired of waltzes, and went to her favorite dressmaker for no less than six fittings. Fitz earnestly sat through at home afternoon after at home afternoon, patiently offering up observations on the latest exhibition at the Royal Academy and the likelihood of rain; gave thoughtful opinions on every dessert prepared by the temperamental French chef they had finally decided upon; and tried his level best to glare at anyone who attempted to talk to her when she clearly was disinclined to talk to them. 

“It's not too much, is it?” she asked him, after a procession of massive vases had gone through their drawing room, Fitz watching in bemusement. “All of this?”

“Of course not. You seem quite happy telling everyone what to do and the moment you're not, we'll run off back to Scotland and do nothing but grow orchids and raise books,” he said, comfortably looping an arm around her waist to draw her back against him. Jemma let herself lean against him, enjoying the way he almost absentmindedly pressed his lips to the curve of her neck and played with one tendril of her hair. 

“I like it more than I expected to,” she admitted. “I thought we should have a party to quash any ridiculous rumors and perhaps to see if we could lure a few investors in but I've enjoyed planning it. I don't think I would want to do this sort of thing all the time—we can be orchid-growing and book-reading eccentrics for most of the year—but with you...With you, it's on my own terms, I suppose. And that makes all the difference.”

“I wouldn't want it any other way,” he said quietly. Jemma's heart soared in her chest. 

“Fitz, I...I'd do it all over again if I had to. The complicated bits and all.” She reached up to take his hand, gripping it fiercely in hers. “I'd choose you, at the end of it.”

“I would too.”


	8. Chapter 8

Jemma Simmons woke up on the morning of the social event of the Season clear-eyed, rather inclined towards a pot of Earl Grey, and absolutely determined to seduce her husband.

She propped herself up on one elbow to stare fondly down at Fitz. There was something about seeing him in the morning—hair mussed, blue eyes shut tight against the day, one arm outstretched as if reaching for her in his sleep—that made her heart catch in her throat. She had loved him for a long while, she supposed, but she thought it must have started on one of the mornings they had woken up together. (Or perhaps it had started on that carriage ride to Scotland or when she had first kissed him at an unseemly hour or even the moment she had approached him behind that potted palm.)

“Fitz,” she whispered as she leaned over him, nudging his side gently. “It's nearly eight.”

“'S too early,” he mumbled and pressed his face into the pillow.

“Too early for you to ruin your wife?”

Fitz bolted upright in bed, then fell back against the pillows again.

“Jemma.” He blinked at her, eyes still a little hazy. “Did you just—I mean, did you wish to—I mean, I'll do whatever you wish to--”

“I do. I won't pretend I'm not nervous,” she said plainly. “Some of the diagrams I found were very intimidating.”

Fitz looked like he couldn't decide whether to be alarmed or intrigued.

“But I thought it might be better if we were nervous together,” she went on. “And we both know that most scientific experiments fail on the first try, so if things go a little sideways the first time around, we can just--”

Fitz leaned forward to kiss her, long and slow and soft, his hands gentle on her waist as he gathered her closer. “Jemma,” he whispered, her name like something sacred in his mouth. “We'll be nervous together.”

She made a noise of agreement and slid her hands beneath the fabric of his pajama top, feeling the warmth of his skin against her palms as she bent to press a kiss to the curve of his neck. Fitz made a very satisfying noise in his throat and pulled her even closer. He whispered her name again and, heart thudding in her chest, she shut her eyes and breathed him in. 

It was not exactly perfect. There was a bit of pain and some awkward shuffling about with the layers and layers of blankets piled on their bed and one particularly ungraceful moment where they nearly both toppled off the bed. But there was also their hands twined together against the sheets and the light in Fitz's eyes and the unmistakable feeling of rightness curled up with him afterward. It was safe there, with his arms wrapped firmly around her and his heart thumping steadily away near her ear and a surety running through her veins. She might dare anything from there, she thought. Launch great plans, attempt mighty things, plot intricate plots--Fitz would be there, ready to listen to whatever she thought. 

“I don't suppose we can cancel the ball and stay in bed all day,” Fitz mumbled against her neck. 

“Unfortunately, I think Monsieur Michaud started preparing the desserts at four this morning. If we call it off, he may start hurling bits of trifle in our direction. Tomorrow, however...” Jemma tried to look seductive and alluring but suspected that she just looked rather confused. 

“Can't have trifle being wasted,” Fitz said solemnly. “Or the dress that I've been forbidden form seeing until tonight.”

“It's a surprise,” she said and pressed a kiss to his bare shoulder. “There's a waistcoat that matches for you too.”

“No kilt? They've already been taking bets on what it might look like. I was planning on placing a small wager on the most outlandish option myself.”

Jemma giggled, Fitz looked at her with the small pleased smile that he reserved exclusively for making her laugh, and she curled closer into her husband's arms, letting the morning light settle over them.

 

“It's a Worth gown, isn't it?” Daisy asked, looking admiringly at the blue ball gown currently given pride of place in Jemma's dressing room. She was sitting on Jemma's chaise longue, button boots currently abandoned on the floor and stocking feet tucked underneath her, with a cup of tea in one hand and the latest volume of a novel in the other. The ball was in exactly five hours and there had already been three meltdowns, one skillfully mediated by Daisy, another quickly averted by Fitz, and the third still going on in the kitchens below despite Bobbi's best efforts. “It's absolutely stunning.”

“I only hope I'll do justice to it.” Jemma glanced at her reflection in the mirror and brushed another stray strand of hair back in place. Her mother would have disapproved of the freckles that had sprung up on her nose from mucking about in Fitz's garden and of the way that she met the gaze of whoever she encountered head on rather than demurely lowering her gaze. Doubtless someone would have something to say about the color of her gown or the way she carried herself or the necklace she chose. She would probably despair of her hairstyle herself at least once. But she thought that she liked the way she looked now, steady gaze and freckles and all, and that carried greater weight than whatever might be whispered or written behind her back.

“Of course you will.” Daisy came up behind her and looped her arms affectionately around Jemma's waist, resting her chin on the other girl's shoulder. “You're one of the loveliest people I know inside and out. Fitz would agree with me.”

Jemma kept her eyes fixed firmly on the wood of her dressing table and colored, thinking of the way Fitz had looked at her that morning. Daisy spotted it anyway, a slow grin spreading across her face.

“Jemma,” she said slowly. “I do believe there's something you're not telling me.”

“Nothing much. Really,” Jemma protested. “Just the usual sorts of marriage things. Nothing particularly remarkable—not to say that Fitz isn't—I mean...”

Daisy looked positively delighted. “No wonder you looked so flushed this morning. Practically glowing.”

 

Jemma had worn quite a few lovely gowns during her Season, delicate confections of silk and lace that she had been wrapped up in like a present. She had even liked some of them, like the pale blue day dress she had worn to garden parties and afternoon teas or the blush pink ball gown that had swirled around her in a most satisfying way. This gown, however, was the first she had chosen for herself, from the sapphire blue color to the embroidery that wound its way across the bodice and down one side of the skirt to the neckline that was quite a bit more daring than anything her mother would have chosen for her. She had conferred with the seamstresses and pored over bolts of fabric and sat for endless fittings and generally gone a bit mad during all of it. And she thought that it might be her favorite thing that she had ever worn. 

“Am I allowed to come in now?” Fitz peered around the door, hands carefully covering his eyes. “I was instructed that I needed to wait for the full effect.”

“Yes, you're allowed.” Jemma turned to face him, silently willing herself to not fuss with her skirts, and felt her heart speed up in her chest at the sight of him. He always looked handsome, she thought a little fuzzily. But he looked quite stupendously handsome in the suit she had had made for him, with the blue waistcoat that made his eyes blaze out brilliantly from his face and the wonders his valet had worked with a cravat and coat perfectly tailored for his slim shoulders. Yet the truly stupendous thing—the thing that was making her heart beat at a prodigious speed and her pulse pound and her breath seem to leave her lungs—was Fitz himself. Fitz and the way he looked at her and the way they were together and all the small precious things that seemed to hang suspended in the air between them.

“You look beautiful, Jemma,” he said quietly. He was already reaching out for her, like there was nothing to do but reach out to her, and catching her hands in his to draw her close. “Like a star come down from the sky to grace us all with her presence.”

“I think I like here better than the sky, though,” she said. “It's where you are, after all.”

“See, now I'd kiss you,” Fitz said, turning her hand over in his. “But I've been warned by Louise that there'll be no strawberry jam for a week if I mess up your hair.”

“Do you want to see what the dress looks like when I spin? I feel a bit like someone out of a fairy tale,” Jemma admitted. 

“Of course I do.” Fitz lifted up one arm to spin her, the full skirt of the dress whirling out around her in a circle of blue, and spun her again and again until she came to a laughing stop and pressed herself into his arms. She leaned up to kiss him, Fitz's mouth sweet against hers and one hand coming up to cup the back of her neck and slide into her hair, and--

“Now that definitely counts as messing up her hair.”

Bobbi was leaning against the doorway, grinning at them both and looking very smug. 

 

Carriages stretched along the street with seemingly no end in sight. Lights and the faint sound of the orchestra spilled out of the townhouse. The air was filled with the scent of the flowers that Jemma had arranged on every surface and the faintest hint of the exquisite cakes the cook had spent all day icing. The excitement seemed to pass from person to person at an ever more rapid pace, as the cream of London society exited their elaborate carriages, made their way into the house, and came to greet Fitz and Jemma at the entrance to the ballroom.

“Should've let me bring my note cards,” Fitz whispered in her ear as he nervously surveyed the line of dukes and earls rapidly approaching them. “I'll forget someone's name and then they'll be mortally offended and there'll be nothing for it but to develop a Shakespearean feud.”

“They would have ruined the line of your suit.” She smiled fondly up at him, slipping her hand through his. It wasn't entirely proper to be seen holding her husband's hand in public. She didn't care. “Besides, I've had the names of the entire ton memorized since the age of eleven.”

Fitz shook his head in admiration and leaned down to quickly kiss her temple. She was fairly certain that at least three elderly grand dames gasped. “Shall we, then?” he asked.

“We shall.” And, with that, Jemma squeezed her husband's hand tight and turned to face the world.

The world wasn't nearly as bad as she had expected it to be. The elderly baronesses and honorables seemed to think that she and Fitz were rather sweet together. The other debutantes who she had shared her Season with all exclaimed over her dress and cheerfully fished for gossip. Various eligible young men who had briefly attempted to court her at one point or other were really quite gracious about it. (Mr. Triplett even invited Fitz to his club for lunch.) Tony Stark mentioned that he had a new engine design he wanted Fitz to look at and Fitz's eyes lit up with excitement. Daisy grinned with delight at the very sight of them and her mother graced them with a nod of approval. And her grandmother...Peggy Carter looked like a queen as she descended the stairs, her red silk dress rustling around her feet. People would be talking about that dress for days. They would be talking about the way she embraced Jemma and turned to warmly greet Fitz for even longer. 

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” her grandmother said, her gaze drifting pointedly to Fitz and Jemma's linked hands. “And to see you so happy.”

Perhaps she was glowing after all.

 

It was a truth universally acknowledged. Leo Fitz would never be a good dancer. However, with Jemma in his arms, effortlessly guiding them around the dance floor without appearing to do a thing, he thought he was quite serviceable. He did trip over his feet once or twice because he was too busy looking at Jemma to pay attention to the direction in which they were going but he couldn't seem to stop. He had seen her every which way since they had first met—pale and nervous behind the potted palm at that fateful ball, full of bravery and eyes flashing as she faced down her mother, laughing with delight as she walked through the greenhouse he had built her, flushed and happy against the sheets of their bed this morning—and he thought that this Jemma, utterly in command of the room as she spun about it, might have been his favorite of them all. Then she smiled up at him and he decided that this new Jemma was his favorite. Then the one in the next moment, then the one in the moment after that, and the one after that and the one after that. It was quite a marvel, he thought, that he would get to discover her all over again each day.

He loved her. Madly, truly, desperately, in a way that he had never felt about anything else in his life. He thought that he had probably begun before he even knew that he had begun, falling in love with her piece by piece until every bit of him had been given over to loving her, stumbling deeper and deeper every time she talked about a flower or leaned her head against her shoulder or pointed out an interesting bit in a book. 

“Jemma,” he said when the dance came to an end and they turned to applaud the orchestra. “I have to--”

That was when someone slapped him in the face with a glove.

Being slapped with a glove didn't actually hurt much, it turned out. The leather just smelled strange and the fingers sort of flopped about his face. Being glowered at by a tall and menacing man who he had heard commonly referred to as Mr. Hellfire, on the other hand, was very alarming. 

“Leopold Fitz,” Mr. Hellfire said. “I'm here to challenge you on behalf of Mr. Ward. Your presence is expected on the heath at dawn. As the challenged party, you will of course be able to choose the weapon. His honor has been grievously injured and--”

“That,” Jemma said. “Is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.”

 

Jemma thought that she had never been so furious in her life. No one challenged her husband to a duel in her ballroom. In fact,no one challenged her husband to a duel at all. It was unconscionably rude. (And quite childish, really.)

“The only thing that's been injured is Mr. Ward's monstrously inflated pride,” she informed the ballroom invader, drawing herself up to her full height. “And the only one who injured his pride was me. So if he'd still like to challenge someone to a duel, he might as well challenge me.”

“Challenge me,” she said again and turned to face the entire ballroom. The room had gone silent, the musicians' bows poised over their instruments, and everyone from dukes and duchesses to the servants holding silver platters was looking at her. “I would prefer to fight a duel than to be the thing that duels are fought over.”

“You cannot--”

“I chose Mr. Fitz,” Jemma said calmly. “I chose to run away with him and I chose to wed him and I intend to keep on choosing him for as long as I live. Because I love him. Quite ardently, in fact.”

The entirety of polite society gaped at her. She smiled back. 

“So then,” she said. “Is it to be swords or pistols? Or perhaps fists? I confess to not having studied boxing but I'm sure I could read up on it before dawn.”

“None,” Ward's crony stammered. He didn't seem to know quite what to say. “But Mr. War--”

“Mr. Ward lacked the courage to come here himself. It's a pity,” she mused. “I had quite the set-down to give him. Will you deliver a message to him from me? Tell him that if he ever sends anyone to bother my husband and I again, or if he has some idea in his head of spreading unsavory rumors, or if he so much as thinks of challenging Fitz to some idiotic duel, I will ensure that the only place he has the faintest hope of finding a courteous reception will be the wilds of Australia. I may make a pauper of him as well if I'm not in a charitable mood that day.”

They were words unlike any she had ever spoken before. Until she had started speaking, she hadn't even been sure what she was going to say. But now she felt quite certain of herself. If anyone threatened Fitz again in the belief that they could strike with impunity, or treated her like an object who had no say in anything that happened to her, she would prove them wrong. 

People were still gaping at her. Some of them seemed shocked. Some others seemed admiring. Mr. Hellfire was rapidly backing away at an undignified pace until he reached the door, at which point he turned tail and fled. Jemma raised a single eyebrow at the rest of the ballroom.

“If anyone else has something to say, or ambitions of challenging anyone else to a duel, you may as well say it now.” No one did. From one corner of the ballroom, she could see Daisy and Bobbi beaming excitedly at her. “Well then. I believe that the orchestra was about to play a waltz and I'm anxious to dance with my husband.” 

“So you love me?” Fitz said as he took her hand in his and prepared for the waltz. 

“Madly, I'm afraid. There's no cure for it.” She stared up into his blue eyes, feeling her heart do impossible things in her chest. “Do you love me?”

“Desperately, I'm afraid. No cure in sight. And I look forward to feeling this way for the rest of my life.”

“Fitz,” she whispered. “Do you think anyone would be scandalized if I kissed you right now?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

She did it anyway.

 

By the age of twenty-four, Leo Fitz had thought he known most things that he was capable of. The way that he felt about his wife had not been one of them. He had never been so happy to be wrong in his life.

A few short months ago, Jemma Simmons had thought she knew everything that her life held in store. Love had not been part of it. She had never been so happy to be wrong in her life.


End file.
